


ET Goes Home

by captainangua



Series: Your Friendly Neighborhood Alien [1]
Category: Lilo & Stitch (2002), Supernatural
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Angst and Humor, Bartender Dean, Bisexual Dean, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Charlie Ships It, Creature Castiel, Creature Fic, Dean Plays Guitar, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge 2015, Dragons, Drinking, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Kiss, First Time, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Kid Sam Winchester, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Bela Talbot/Dean Winchester, POV Castiel, POV Dean, POV Sam, Past Character Death, Phone Sex, References to Marvel, Rimming, Sam Ships It, Sex Work, Sex Worker Dean, Shapeshifting, Spaceships, mindreading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 04:24:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 52,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5320343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainangua/pseuds/captainangua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean’s had to base a lot on the fact that aliens don’t exist. For one thing, it allows him to keep on telling himself that his parents really had been crazy all along for their lifelong obsession that they’d dragged his kid brother into with them. And the less thought on the crazy that had led John and Mary Winchester to their deaths, the better.</p><p>So when their new dog turns out to be a fugitive mind-reading shapeshifter from outer space, Sam figures that telling his brother anything about it is a Bad Idea.</p><p>A Lilo and Stitch AU featuring a full cast of aliens, dragons, unimpressed social workers and Captain America, in which Sam gets everything he could have ever wished for, Dean is forced to consider whether ‘bisexual’ still covers an attraction to people who technically aren’t human, and Cas learns about what it means to make up part of a family. Along with half of a fake relationship...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Freak

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so this was mainly all written on holiday on a lot of different notebooks quickly smeared with sun cream. Only the ministrations of my AMAZING beta astudyinsolitude turned this into something which made any kind of sense to read and no longer contain sentences which would repeat themselves twice before stopping.  
> The fantastic art for this fic was created by the incredible Vetrina-271 (she drew me a dragon clearly she’s the best person that ever lived), who stepped in as a pinch-hitter like an actual hero. Go find her on tumblr, she is amazing I tell you.
> 
> (On the subject of art, if no one could talk to me ever about LJ coding ever again that'd be great.)
> 
> So this THING below has kept basically to the original idea I had for the story, the premise being born from crying over Lilo and Stitch, and thinking for a disturbingly short time about how to make it work for Supernatural. What’s changed it and turned it into (mostly) a different story is getting over the main issues which came up with that such as, but literally none of them are Hawaiian; that would be bestiality though; and Sam is never going to be that much littler than Dean. Things were changed. 
> 
> ...And it kind of ended up going full fanfiction. Like I almost want to call it crack, and would, if the characters didn't spend so much time angsting.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone's quick to blame the alien. - Aeschylus

 

“Have him brought forward,” the Grand Councilwoman quietly told her second-in-command as she stood at her podium and surveyed the chamber. It was far more crowded than she’d been expecting – but then of course, this was a case everyone wanted to flock to, to find out for themselves whether the rumours were true, and the madman really had found a means to create life of some kind – perhaps even a higher form of life, according to some… Naomi could admit to herself that she was even curious about it all, as they brought Crowley forwards on the hovering stand where he was shackled to the centre of the crowd’s attention. He looked as unabashed as he ever did – perfectly at ease in the limelight, even with his arms cuffed.

The smug bastard.

“Looking radiant up there, Naomi, darling,” he called up to her, which she pointedly ignored.

“Crowley,” she began, “You are called here to this council today on charges of illegal genetic experimentation in an attempt to create...” She glanced down at the screen again, rereading technical jargon before she mangled it. When she finally managed to list the charges laid against him, Crowley looked amused at her struggle, and yet still managed to seem convincingly shocked.

“ _That’s_ what this is about? As any number of scientists will be able to tell you, as well as being entirely illegal, such a feat as you’re implying would be next to _impossible_ to accomplish. So no, my research has, of course, remained _completely_ on the theoretical plain…”

“So you deny the allegations?”

He rolled all four of his eyes. “ _Yes._ ”

Naomi turned back to look at her second, who was smiling broadly at her. “Abbadon, have them bring forward what you found in his lab.”

As Abbadon nodded, Naomi was granted the pleasure of watching Crowley’s jaw drop unhappily. “Well, when I say that I’ve _never_ involved myself in any experimentation…”

As the glass cage was brought open, Crowley rolled his head about in defeat, and allowed a small smile of pride to creep over his features. “…Well. I was lying, I’ll admit.”

“It’s _hideous,”_ Naomi let out, eyes narrowing as the crowd gasped.

“Hideous?” Crowley laughed. “This is the next step forward in our advancement! Don’t you see what I’ve managed here, sweetheart? This may look like a blue ball of mould to you – and it is – but it’s a being ten times more intelligent than even me – and fifty times as strong as your attack beasts, and with the potential to be sixty times faster! It can analyse _any_ kind of situation, even skim the thoughts of others, and immediately learn the best means to cause the greatest amount of havoc…”

As Crowley continued shouting excitedly the blue blob in front of them began to _change_ , and shift into… into a perfect copy of its creator, with its unnaturally bright blue eyes the only remaining piece of its original colour, and then…

“…the greatest amount of havoc, not even to benefit itself- just for havoc’s sake!” the creature finished in its creator’s voice, before Crowley had a chance to finish his sentence. Excitedly, Crowley held his arms up, as though expecting applause. Naomi felt like retching. This was easily the eeriest thing she’d ever witnessed. Of course Crowley was enjoying himself.

“And for what _purpose_ did you design this creature?”

“Purpose?” Crowley shrugged. “Mostly just to see if I could do it… but it could have some use as a weapon, I guess.” His creature grinned horribly, its eyes fixed on Naomi, unnervingly.

With difficulty, she looked away. A lesser being could become hypnotised by those eyes, she was sure, she found herself thinking as she sniffed loudly. “Well. You’ve confessed to your crimes, now.”

“ _Crimes?_ This is the foremost scientific advancement of our-”

“Have him taken away,” Naomi told Abbadon, whose guards had the scientist whisked out of the chamber at her signal. Life imprisonment, Naomi decided with some satisfaction. That would do well. A waste of talent perhaps, but she personally would feel no regret at never having to see him again. As she looked down again to face the creature, the crowd gasped again, almost as one, as the creature changed itself again… and this time resembled Naomi herself. Still smiling, it gave a small bow.

Attempting to shake herself of her revulsion, Naomi kept her face blank. “Do you have name, creature?”

The creature blinked with her eyes. “Some would call me the High Councilwoman.”

With Abbadon hissing her disapproval behind her, Naomi continued to appear unfazed. She would not allow herself to be rattled by this… freak.

“Then tell us, nameless one, is there anything of you that is your own? Which deserves saving?”

The creature seemed to genuinely ponder on the question she’d posed, and perhaps was even having a crisis regarding the nature of its existence. For a moment, a mirror of herself looking unhappy in front of her, Naomi almost pitied it. And then it spoke, and the spell was broken.

“Would anyone like to see what the Councilwoman wears under her clothes?” It shouted up at the crowd.

As the responding noise from the crowd grew rowdy, Naomi rolled her eyes and turned back to Abbadon once more. “Have that thing destroyed,” she told her as she walked away.

*

The creature had only been removed from its enclosure for around a day, but already it was learning. There were so many different peoples out in the outside, and all with so many different characteristics, boiling down to similar motivations, wants, _feelings_. They all wanted survival, they all wanted power, they all craved the space to enjoy themselves.

When the creature had been asked if there was anything about it which “deserved saving” it had given no answer because it was not certain. But this was partly because it was not certain that there was anything about any of them worth that. They all seemed so much the same, and nothing they did seemed to _mean_ anything.

But the creature was already certain that it was smarter than they were.

Their first mistake they had made regarding it - no, he, the creature corrected himself, he felt like a male of his own unique species - thought with pleasure, was in not killing him immediately after their decision to.

These guards took orders from others, waited for peer approval, and so were weakened. The creature had no peers, and took orders from no one. He made his own decisions, and he’d already decided that he didn’t want to wait here for death.

He wanted to get out.

*

“It _what_?”

Naomi snarled her anger as she watched Abbadon’s jaw clench. It was a sight that might have made someone with lesser nerves take a step or two back. But Naomi stood where she was and stared her Captain down.

“Escaped, ma’am. It is a temporary state of affairs only, I can promise that.”

Naomi forced her breathing to remain calm. A creature like that, destructive and powerful and intelligent, loose on her ship… “And how do you propose that this will remain temporary? Do you even know where it is?”

“Not currently, but-”

There was a noise above their heads. A loud, clattering noise. Keeping her gaze steely, Naomi raised an eyebrow to Abaddon, who looked as though she could physically feel every sound coming from the ceiling. “It’s in the _vents,_ I’m assuming,” Naomi hissed. “There, Captain. We’ve successfully located it. Now go and get it.”

Abaddon looked barely capable of restraining herself from starting to fire at the ceiling when she saluted smartly and walked out of the room. The moment her officer had left the room, Naomi allowed herself to sigh heavily and collapse into a chair. It sounded as though the creature had gone from the room, for now…

She should have known better than to believe Crowley’s promises that this time he would keep his experiments within the dictates of the law. Or, rather, she _had_ known better, but she’d hoped that what he was able to legally produce would be worth whatever damage his illegal work would wreck. But now she wasn’t sure. This thing he had created… it could literally become _anything._ With a little knowledge, and apparently it had the tools to attain that in abundance, this thing could be unstoppable…

She was sitting for about half an hour when she heard the announcement over the tannoid speakers, informing the ship that one of the emergency pods had been released without authorisation, and that all guns were to be trained on it by order of Captain Abbadon. Naomi looked out and watched the pod speed away from them, deftly avoiding the fire they were sending at it. And then the pod… disappeared.

She rubbed a hand to her oozing temples. She had to hand it to Crowley, his work might frequently be abhorrently amoral and recklessly dangerous, but it did always _work_.

*

Sam tried not to be nervous, to put on a big _Dean_ sort of a smile when he stood up after Ellen called his name. Or, Mrs Harvelle, that was what he was supposed to call her at school. He didn’t think El – Mrs Harvelle would mind all that much what he called her, but Ava had laughed at him last time he’d called her that in class by accident. Everyone seemed to think it was almost as funny as when Lily had tried to call her “Mom”.

Not that Sam would ever worry about mixing up his teacher, or anyone, with his Mom. No one was ever going to be her.

Mrs Harvelle gave him an encouraging nod when he made it to the front of the classroom and turned to face his class. Dean had told him to imagine that everyone was naked, but Dean wasn’t here, and anyway, Sam wasn’t sure why that was supposed to work. It probably a trick that worked alright for Dean playing gigs, but Sam just couldn’t see it working out on a class of fourth graders. Except that maybe everyone would be so busy wondering where all their clothes had gone that they wouldn’t be staring at Sam so badly.

He cleared his throat experimentally and heard someone muffle a giggle, but he decided not to look at who it was because he’d already worked out that it got worse when he looked at him. So he was going to stare at the back wall instead. When he wasn’t looking at his presentation notes. Right. The presentation.

“Uh, so the thing that interests me that I’m going to talk about today is space…” he started, “and the uh, the possibility that other people might live there.”

“Like aliens?”

Mrs Harvelle shushed Lenore harshly, but Sam grinned. “Right. But the word ‘alien’ just means foreign, different. Like when people talk about aliens on the news, they’re normally just talking about people who weren’t born in America,” he said, nodding with the wisdom of someone who had spent most of his ten years of life disappointed by misleading stories in the news.

“There are a lot of people – even scientists – who think that there is life out in the galaxy besides us. Because – like, Stephen Hawking and all sorts of people all think the universe is too big not to have other planets with other kinds of life on them. Uh, I’ve got this thing that Buzz Aldrin – he’s an astronaut, he was the second person to walk on the moon – yeah, that he said,” Sam said, shuffling papers, determined not to let his hands start shaking, “that ‘There may be aliens in our Milky Way galaxy, and there are billions of other galaxies. The probability is almost _certain_ that there is life somewhere in space’.” Sam smiled as he successfully finished the quote without stuttering. He’d wanted to use that one, it had been his Mom’s favourite, and he was sure that Ellen would have heard her say it before.

“But yeah, if there are aliens, they’re probably really _far_ away,” Sam continued, warming to his topic now. “Like, we can’t even imagine how big our galaxy is. And there might even be other universes – like parallel universes – there could be a parallel version of this class right now where, where uh…” Sam wracked his brain and looked down at his classmates. “Where Sarah’s wearing a red top instead of a blue one,” he said quickly, pointing at Sarah, who grinned, and Sam had to try hard not to drop all his prompt cards.

“So… are you saying that if Sarah wears a blue top, she’s an alien?”

Sam rolled his eyes in frustration. “No, just… the universe is huge right? Like bigger than anything you could ever imagine. And there’s loads of universes – probably. So out there somewhere, there _has_ to be _some_ kind of other lifeform, it’s just not that likely that we’ll ever get to talk to them, since there’s like _crazy_ time difference the further away you go, so you basically need to start _time travelling_ to – like the light we see from stars? Some of those stars aren’t even there anymore.

“So,” Sam continued when no one said anything, “whenever aliens have tried to speak to us before, they must be ones that are really way smarter than us. Or, at least a different kind of smart,” he amended quickly. “Because how else did they even manage to travel here?”

“Aliens only travel here in movies,” Jake scoffed. “Why would they bother coming here?”

Sam grinned, eager to start getting into the main meat of his argument. “Well, see, there _is_ proof, and loads of people like my parents spend their whole lives trying to prove it.”

“Well then they can’t be very good at it then,” Tyson scoffed.

Sam tried to bite down on his lip to stop himself from getting angry, and forced himself to not look over at Ellen – Mrs Harvelle.

“Actually there has been proof they’ve uncovered – loads of it – but the government keeps wanting to keep a lid on it, because they know that everyone would freak out if they knew, and they want to keep other countries from finding out more about the aliens than we do.”

Jess put her head thoughtfully to one side. “Like the Men in Black…?”

“Right!” Sam breathed gratefully. He liked Jess. She was probably the prettiest girl in their class and sometimes her parents sent her to school with cookies, and she’d always share. “Except, I don’t think there’s any evidence that any aliens are actually working with the government to catch other aliens, but then, there’s a lot we don’t know.”

“There’s a lot _you_ don’t know,” Sam heard someone mutter at the back of the class. He didn’t know who, didn’t want to know who. He could still hear Dean in his head, telling him that this was a bad idea for his presentation, that the other kids would make fun of him for it, that he’d only end up getting upset by it all. But Sam had been so determined, because it felt like if their Mom was still there then she’d be proud of him. Maybe even Dad would have said something.

But of course, Sam would never know, now, what either of them would think.

He took a deep breath in. He could keep going, he could do this.

And he could. He actually made it through the rest of his presentation without getting upset or angry – he talked about astronauts, and how he’d like to be one someday, and that seemed like safer territory than extra-terrestrials, because nobody said anything. He decided not to pass around the print-outs of sightings he’d brought with him. Mrs Harvelle told him that he’d done a good job, and then Madison did her presentation on wolf packs, and then they finished for lunch.

Right. Lunch.

It wasn’t that Sam had always been bad at making friends, keeping friends. But after his parents… well. He’d been kind of a mess, and everyone knew it. And these days it was just simpler to keep his distance. From the people who really wanted to know if he was alright, from the people who wanted to see if they could make him start crying or lashing out again. But it wasn’t so bad anymore, Sam thought, trying to convince himself as he finished off his sandwich outside on the wall. Things were getting back to normal, a little bit. He was starting to feel less like crazy Sam Winchester with the dead parents and the gay brother, and more like he might be able to be… just Sam again.

It just got so _tiring_ being so angry with so many people at once.

“Hey, Sammy – gonna tell us more about the little green men?”

It was Ava, and she was laughing as she sat down next to him – she was usually laughing about something. Sometimes she almost reminded Sam of how his brother used to look all the time, when he’d gone around with that little glint of mischief in his eye.

Sam sighed. “No one’s ever proved they saw anything green, Ava.”

A few of her friends sat down beside her – and they weren’t so bad, just a bit too giggly for Sam to cope with, most days. “So tell us about what people _do_ see. My Dad says it’s all drunks and attention seekers telling the stories and that the people who believe them just watched too many Spielberg movies.”

Sam smiled, a little shyly as he tried to remember Dean’s voice in his head, telling him to talk about this stuff with caution. “Well… My grandparents saw them once. And uh… they didn’t say they were green. Just really curious.”

Ava stared at him for a moment and shook her head with a smile. “Y’know, you’re kind of a freak, Sam. But you’re kinda cool.”

“I dunno, I think you got the freak part right anyway,” said another voice as Sam felt a shadow fall over him. Tyson. Ohshit. “Not so sure about the cool part though, right _freak?”_

Reluctantly, Sam looked up. Dean liked to remind him that Mom’s side of the family at least all turned out tall, and that one day Sam would be at least as tall as Dean.

But right now Tyson Brady was a good head taller than Sam, and he had three other guys all flanking him looking down at Sam like he was a bug they were interested in watching squirm.

“I mean,” Tyson continued with a sneer, “You actually _believe_ in all that shit your crazy parents got you spouting. Like you don’t have to anymore, y’know. You don’t have to pretend just ‘cause they’re dead-”

Sam really had tried practicing the whole counting-to-ten thing, he had.

*

Dean was luckily just finishing with his call from his second job – really it was more of a first job since it technically paid him better than Rufus could afford to, but he didn’t like giving it anymore weight in his mind – when his cellphone lit up beside him. He clutched the landline in his hand that much tighter as he leaned over to read the caller id.

The school.

_Fuck,_  he thought, and in an attempt to hurry things up, Dean started moaning obscenely down the home phone.

“Oh _, God,_ baby, I can feel you _burning_ in me, I’m still so fucking _tight_ ,” he groaned, because this guy was a regular, and he liked to imagine he was doing damage. Dean wasn’t sure if it was a sadistic thing or more like he was overcompensating for something. “You’re gonna leave me so _broken_ tomorrow…”

The guy finished pretty fast after that, and after suffering through an unattractive string of noises, Dean hung up and lunged for his cell.

“Hello?”

“Mr Winchester? I’m calling you about your brother, Sam…”

“Uh-huh?” Dean asked, trying to force his voice up about five octaves. There was no need to sound so husky or whatever when he was on the phone to the school.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to come down to the school. Sam was involved in a fight and we’ve been forced to suspend him, so he needs someone to pick him up.”

Dean leaned back against the wall as he forced his breathing to slow. Of all the days…

“Of course. I’ll leave right now,” he told the receptionist or whoever it was calling him and hung up, glancing around the kitchen. _I’ll have time for clear up duty later_ , he thought determinedly as he snatched his car keys off the counter and ran outside into the afternoon sun, where his Baby was out and gleaming. Not for the first time that week, Dean felt the clunking feeling in his gut that he was gonna have to sell her soon, but again he started the engine and tried to pretend he hadn’t thought it. He’d see the house go first, and gladly. Having the car felt good; it was something he could remember his parents by while still knowing that it was his. The house with all its nearly untouched rooms and its winter heating bills he could never afford sometimes made Dean feel like they were living in a crypt.

Sam obviously still loved the house.

It would be useful, really damn useful, if people could ‘deal with grief’ in the same way.

Like this fight today, or whatever it was that happened. Compared to Dean at that age, people always assumed that Sam was the easier kid, the chilled out one, but that was only because Sam usually had the sense to stay quiet. Like, 80% of the time maybe. Until all that sadness and anger that he’d held inside until he couldn’t take anymore would just snap right out of him all in one.

Dean got it, because he had the same issues. He just didn’t quite have his brother’s self control, he thought as blasted loudly on the horn as a (good-looking) guy in a nice suit decided to walk across the road while Dean was driving down it – admittedly faster than he should have been going, but that only made him loud and easy to hear coming, right?

The man glared at him after being startled across the road. If Dean had been in the mood, or had the time to do anything about it, he would have said that it was a pretty hot glare to be on the end of.

But as usual, he didn’t. And there was Bela, though Dean highly doubted she’d be sticking around for much longer…

Dean stopped outside the school, eyes quickly scanning the steps Sam would usually wait for him on. Not there. Perfect, so he’d have to go in. Maybe they just didn’t let delinquent kids leave the school on their own.

Someone was certainly waiting for him, Dean found after he marched inside, but it still wasn’t his brother. It was the school principal. Mrs… Mrs…

“Mrs Tran,” Dean managed as he slowed his pace and held out a hand to her, desperately mustering his most winning grin that had succeeded in turning probably hundreds of women into adoring piles of putty. But Mrs Tran was looking decidedly unmoved.

“It’s Ms, actually,” she told him. “And I assume you’re Mr Winchester. I wondered if I could have a talk with you in my office?”

“Yeah… yeah, of course,” Dean told her as he looked around once more, feeling nervous now. One, this lady terrified him. And two, he still hadn’t seen Sam. For all he knew the kid was lying injured somewhere.

Fuck, he hadn’t even thought of that before now.

And why couldn’t Ellen have dealt with this? Ellen was scary, sure, but at least for Dean he knew what to expect her to say. _You need to talk to your brother more; You need to go out and see your friends more; What happened to all your old hobbies?_

Hah. Right. Like Dean had any hours in the day left for _hobbies_ between two jobs, a nine-year old, and a sometimes-girlfriend.

“Please take a seat, Mr Winchester,” the woman said as she sat down in her own very large chair. She was starting to get on Dean’s nerves. Partly by calling him by the name which still very much belonged to his Dad in his head, and partly because he _hated_ it when people tried to act like they were giving you a choice when they weren’t. Like saying ‘take a seat’ when clearly there was just the one seat to choose from, and it looked like a stool made for the kids.

“So. Suspended, huh?”

The principal nodded. “Yes… for a week. To be honest it’s almost as much about his protection as it is a punishment for his behaviour.”

“No offence lady, but some punishment. No school for a whole week – I’d have got myself into fights for that.”

He’d said something wrong again. She was definitely looking at him funny.

“I think with most of the children we teach here you’re probably right. But with Sam… you have to understand, Mr Winchester, your brother is an incredibly intelligent child who I believe honestly wants to learn.”

Dean shifted awkwardly in his seat. “Call me Dean,” he insisted. “And I thought he was in trouble here?”

“Oh, he is. I have a child in hospital right now with a broken nose because your brother punched him in the face. One girl fainted because of all the blood,” she groaned, rolling her eyes and seeming suddenly so much more human to Dean, now that it was obvious she was also having a bad day.

“This has already caused a lot of paperwork for a lot of people who could have done without it,” she continued. “But I’m a great believer in finding a solution and addressing a problem’s source instead of just exercising damage control. Especially with young minds like these…” She straightened her back again and looked Dean squarely in the eye. “Mr Winchester, Sam’s progress has dropped dramatically within the last year. And I don’t believe in coincidence.”

“We’re both going through a hard… adjustment, Ma’am.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice softening. “And I understand that this is a difficult time for you both. I have a son myself and when I had to leave him on his own for the first time we both found things very hard.”

“Yeah? He live far?”

“Very,” she said, with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “In any case, I’m sure social services has been in touch to offer their support already.”

Support. Right. “Actually they’re coming around today.”

Ms Tran nodded encouragingly. “I hope they’ll be able to give that valid support that you’re needing.”

“You wanna talk _valid support_ lady then maybe start telling me where the school was when this fight was going on? And what was it over – do you even know? How come Sam’s the one getting the blame just because he won?”

“I wouldn’t call it winning, Dean.”

“Well since he’s not the kid laid up in hospital right now, I sure as hell would.”

“You will stop shouting at me, Mr Winchester,” she snapped, eyes blazing. “I believe the fight began when some of Sam’s classmates started taunting him in the playground, which may have been to do with his presentation he gave that morning, which incidentally I hear he excelled in.”

Dean laid his head back, wishing he had something to hit it against. The fucking aliens. It always came back to the fucking aliens and the fucking UFOs.

“Of course he did,” Dean said aloud, tonelessly. “I think I’d like to see my brother now, if that’s alright with you, Ma’am.”

He watched confusion pass over the woman’s face for the first time. “But he already left the school when he saw your car.”

_Don’t freak out,_ Dean reminded himself immediately _, or at the_ _very least don’t let them_ know _how bad you’re freaking out._

“Right. Course. I remember now. I’ll just, uh… I’ll just go take him home then,” Dean stuttered, and barely avoided knocking over a stack of books as he edged his way out of the door, Ms Tran staring curiously after him.

*


	2. Inspection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps we've never been visited by aliens because they have looked upon Earth and decided there's no sign of intelligent life. - Neil deGrasse Tyson

It could have been worse, Dean tried to think rationally to himself. Sam might have ran off on his own or something, but instead he’d come home, where at least Dean got to know he was safe. The Beatles continuing to blare out from upstairs telling Dean that they needed somebody via their Mom’s old record player were definitely evidence of that much.

“Sam, you better open this fucking door already or I _swear_ that by the time the social worker gets here they ain’t even gonna know you ever lived here,” Dean yelled as he threw another stone at the upstairs window, “Because I’ll have chopped you up into tiny little fucking pieces and exploded you up into that sky you like so much, you hear me, Sam?”

There was still no answer, but then, the music was blaring so loud that Sam really might not have heard him.

Dean really needed to start remembering all his keys and not just relying on the nice neighbourhood with the lazy inhabitants to keep the house safe whenever he ran out for five minutes. It was almost hilarious, that Dean had got so uncaring about that kind of thing when their house had a front door reinforced with steel because their Dad had been a paranoid bastard.

Though come to think of it, that might be a lot of the reason why Dean ignored the door.

Starting to feel anxious over the time, Dean pulled out his phone and saw the two missed calls from Bela. Shit. And that the social worker was due at the house in half an hour. Which was also shit. Especially if Sam was still dogged down in one of his moods by the time the social worker arrived.

…Dean needed to get in there.

But the how of that was hard to work out when the fucking Beatles wouldn’t stop blaring out the open window…

The open window.

With the drainpipe leading right up to it.

Dean was a _genius_.

Or he was going to die. But hey, at least the social worker couldn’t say he hadn’t tried or whatever. Like this was definitely taking parenting seriously. Upping his game. Hah.

Just a few feet up and Dean came to the uncomfortable conclusion that he was a lot heavier than he’d been at fifteen and climbing up Lisa Braedon’s drainpipe. And the Braedon’s had probably had a sturdier drainpipe too, Dean realised, as he desperately dug his fingers in to the edges of the drainpipe and wanted to cry as he felt himself slide, hearing the pipe start to creak…

This was a mistake. This was definitely a stupid fucking mistake and Dean was definitely no genius and now he was going to _die_ –

“Mr Winchester?”

Dean let himself slide down all five feet of the drainpipe that he’d managed to struggle up with an easy grin. Which faded the moment he saw who he was aiming it at.

…That would be his goodlooking suit guy he’d almost managed to run over earlier. Who didn’t look any happier with him. Because the day was just being _that_ sort of a bitch.

“Hey! Can I help you?”

The man looked at him coolly and pulled out a clipboard, making Dean lick his lips nervously. Nothing good ever came from people holding one of those.

If this was the social worker then Dean felt like he might have to start screaming. Or maybe setting himself on fire.

“Well, for a start, Mr Winchester, I’d like to know what possessed you to drive that fast down a road leading up to the local school.”

Dean managed to hold his polite smile as he blinked in concentrated confusion. “Driving? Me? I’m more of a pedestrian type, buddy, haven’t had the car out in weeks…”

“Funny. I’d have sworn that was _your_ Chevy that almost ran me over this morning,” Clipboard-Guy told him, pointing an accusatory finger in the direction of Dean’s car. “It’s pretty damn recognisable, I’d have thought.”

“Huh,” Dean said, eyes dutifully following the finger. “Yeah that’s uh… that’s pretty weird.”

The man smiled tersely and held his clipboard out in front of him like a shield he intended to use to barrel his way through into the house. Which admittedly still probably held more chances of success than waiting for Sam to answer his cell – the kid didn’t know exactly what work Dean used the home phone for, but he knew he wasn’t to answer it – though Dean _should_ try giving that another go…

“So may I come in to see the house then?”

Dean nodded slowly. So this _was_ the social worker. _Just perfect_ , he thought as he tried for a grin, and stuck out his hand. The man shook it, looking him straight in the eye.

“You’re, uh. You’re early.”

“I know.”

Dean waited a beat in case he’d get anything else like an explanation, or apology, even, but there was nothing. “O-kay”, he drew out. “So we’ll just… head in then. I’ll just, uh,” Dean coughed. “I’ll just have to call Sam. Tell him to let us in.”

The social worker raised his eyebrow as Dean took out his phone. “ _Call_ him?”

“Yes, sir. We operate on a strict no-opening-the-door-to-strangers policy, here.”

“I certainly hope you’re not a stranger, Dean.”

“Oh, right. Well, I just… uh, I was out getting stuff to, um, to clean the drainpipes,” Dean improvised wildly as he watched the social worker cast a sceptical look over their home, which needed a hell of a lot more than clean drainpipes. A new roof, for a start.

The social worker sighed. “By all means,” he told Dean, dismissing him with a hand to go on and make his call. Dean smiled toothily at him and obediently punched at Sam’s speed-dial button again, then started to feel mounting panic with every unanswered ring. What would he do if Sam didn’t answer his phone? Actually climb up the drainpipe and ask Clipboard-Man to wait at the bottom for him?

Sam answered on the ninth ring. “Hello?”

“ _Sammy._ Mind opening the door for us?”

“Us?”

“Me and Mr…” Dean turned to face the social worker, eyes wide with his question.

“Henrikson.”

“Me and Mr _Henrikson,_ your new social worker, need to come up and have a talk with you, alright?”

Dean could almost hear the reluctant nod Sam was trying to give him in response. “Sure,” Sam said, and the Beatles finally stopped singing. Another awkward few moments later and Sam was at the opened front door, his eyes suspicious but it his mouth wide open in what the kid clearly hoped would look like a welcoming sort of smile.

“Hey,” he said, as Dean marched up towards him and picked him up for a spinning hug, muttering quickly in his ear, “I am going to _murder_ you, you little shit.”

Sam gulped and nodded slightly, but by the time Dean had set him back down on the ground he was looking back up at Henrikson and smiling brightly, the picture of the perfect Stepford kid. “Sorry, what’s your name again? I’m Sam,” he added, sticking out his hand. The social worker came forward and shook it gravely.

 “I’m Victor,” he told him. “And I’d like you show me around your house if that would be alright?” Sam glanced once at Dean who nodded.

“Sure,” Sam said with a shrug, and led them inside the house.

It was funny, because Dean’s own room was immaculate – his Mom had always laughed at him for carrying his Dad’s ‘neat-freak’ army ways in his genes ever since he’d been about like nine and started trying to do the dishes before his Mom had a chance, because he didn’t want germs to start turning up. But though he felt like he was trying, Dean just hadn’t been able to keep the house clean. His room was still a kind of sanctuary, but the rest of the house looked as though a pack of the dogs Sam wanted so bad had just ran through, eating and destroying everything they passed.

He’d meant to clean, Dean thought again with a lump in his throat as he watched the social worker take it all in, inhaling the scent of last night’s take out Dean hadn’t gotten around to clearing up after.

“So _yeah_ …” Sam said, trying to slink out the door.

“Yeah, I was going to clean earlier but-”

“It’s my fault,” Sam got in quickly, “Dean had to come and get me at school.”

Henrikson raised that eyebrow of judgement again. “Oh? Would that have been in a car?” he asked Dean before turning back to Sam. “Were you ill, Sam?”

“No,” Sam said, just as Dean said “Yes,” and glared down at his brother.

“I _was_ ill,” Sam tried, “but I’m feeling loads better now.” He coughed once, apparently for good measure, and Dean just managed to stop himself from rolling his eyes.

Henrikson clearly didn’t buy it. “I’m glad to hear it, Sam,” he said to both of them as he cleared a space for himself on the couch and sat down. Then he looked up at Dean. “Would you mind getting me a drink of water?”

“Uh, water, sure…”

He just wanted to get Sam alone, Dean thought as he walked as quickly as he could without looking like he was rushing into the kitchen. The dick.

Sure enough Dean got back as quick as he could and he still came in to Sam awkwardly working his way through lying to every question the social worker was throwing at him. Like how many meals he usually ate in a day. Sam hadn’t eaten breakfast in months, he always insisted he wasn’t hungry whenever Dean tried to push it at him.

“Three,” Sam answered quickly. Probably too quickly – this guy seemed sharp, Dean thought again with dread as the social worker hummed at his clipboard.

“Is there anything in your routine that’s changed a lot since Dean’s started looking after you, Sam?”

Sam hesitated, and Dean felt for him, because this was one lie too big. Fuck, what _hadn’t_ changed? Dean’s be off touring with the band by now, not still working for Rufus at the grill, and _definitely_ not taking the phone sex work since he wouldn’t be having to fret over the bills and the debts Dean hadn’t even been aware existed up till his parents left him with them all. Sam wouldn’t be wearing a uniform that was rapidly getting too short on him – their Mom would have remembered to get that changed by now. He probably wouldn’t have been getting into fights in school and then getting suspended for them because she would have definitely put a stop to that.

“Well…” Sam started, looking down at his feet. “Uh, it’s Tuesday, so usually by now I’d be helping my Dad clean the telescopes…”

“Telescopes?”

Sam’s eyes lit up. “Yeah! We’ve got a whole room of ‘em upstairs – wanna see?”

Dean watched with some amusement as the social worker seemed to go through a kind of internal struggle. “Of course, Sam,” he said eventually, and Sam grinned and started walking towards the stairs, gesturing for them to follow him.

“Telescopes in the plural isn’t usually something I’m expecting to find when I pay visits to most people you understand,” Henrikson commented to Dean as they navigated their way up the stairs, as Dean tried to clear up the piles of clothes as they climbed.

“Yeah, well, I guess we ain’t most people then, huh?”

“No,” Henrikson agreed, giving Dean a piercing look as he followed Sam into the telescope room. “No you’re not.”

…and he didn’t make that sound like a positive thing.

The room was dustier than Dean remembered it being – his Dad would hate that. Dust, all over his precious collection, in the room he’d built to house them all that he’d been so damn proud of. Yeah, a hell of a load more proud than he’d ever been of his college dropout kid.

Their Mom had never been one for the science side of their marital obsession – she’d grown up in it out of loyalty to family history and her own parents’ claims to have been abducted, and she’d stuck with it, so far as Dean could tell, because she loved collecting stories, and she enjoyed anything that criticised the government trying to keep secrets. Or just criticised the government really.

So this had been John’s space, his very expensive and weird-ass garden shed, and he’d sit up there, always watching, always keeping faith that one day he’d see something, that one day he’d be right.

Now Dean hated the room. Not so much because it made him miss them, but because it made him want to smash everything in there into tiny pieces. But since he figured that wouldn’t go far in impressing Mr Victor Henrikson that he was a fit and sane guardian for a nine year old, Dean fought the impulse down.

“Do you spend much time in here, Sam?”

“Uh, sure. Most days I’m in here trying to keep them all clean. And some nights I take a look. Like last week with the meteor shower.”

“You’re a very knowledgeable young man, Sam. I wasn’t aware that there was one.”

“Really? I got loads of photos I could show you if you like…”

Dean smiled innocently at the social worker as he got pulled in to Sam’s little world. He wanted to judge how well Dean handled him? Fine. Let him find out what it was like.

Sure enough, the guy barely seemed to have a chance to get a word in edgeways for the next half hour as Sam exercised his new power over his captive audience. Dean only needed to half-listen enough to push into the conversation once or twice to remind his brother to steer away from more dangerous topics, like why they didn’t use the home phone, or what sort of views their parents had passed onto them regarding the government. But by the time the social worker announced that he’d be leaving, they’d still spent most of the time he was there literally just talking about space.

Things probably could have gone worse, all things considered, Dean allowed himself to think as he walked Henrikson back towards the door.

“I’ll be dropping in again at some point over the next few days,” he told Dean. “Until then I’ll take a look at your place of work, maybe have a talk with Sam’s school.”

“Right…” Should he just admit the whole suspension deal? The moment seemed to be passing and the guy could be just bluffing about talking to the school… “Of course,” Dean said easily as he opened the door.

“Tell me Dean, has Sam been able to have counselling made available to him through the school?”

“Uh, I dunno. I guess if he _needed_ it they might have someone-”

Henrikson sighed and held Dean’s eye. “From what I know, you both went through an awful trauma that night-”

“What, you think our parents dying left us screwed in the head or something? ‘Cause we’re fine, buddy.”

“I’m saying that as Sam’s social worker it’s my job to be concerned with his mental wellbeing along with his physical. And from what I’ve been able to observe, your brother seems lonely at best and dangerously introverted at worst, particularly among his peer group.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Sam,” Dean growled.

“With due respect, I don’t think that should ever be entirely your call, Dean.”

Dean fumed. _You can’t solve all your problems with violence,_ he heard his Mom’s voice echo in his head. But she wasn’t there and it was so difficult to remember how anyone tried solving anything without it.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Pleas do,” Henrikson said, before tilting his head up to where Sam was still standing at the top of the staircase. “You have my card with my number, Sam.”

“Yes, sir.”

The social worker’s face softened, and twisted his face in something like confusion. “Definitely no need to call me ‘sir’, Sam. Right,” he said, straightening his suit and glancing at Dean, “so I’ll be seeing you both soon then,” he told them, and walked out the door. But because Dean didn’t trust him not to stick around and listen at the door he waited, counting out twenty long beats before he moved or spoke. Then he turned around and looked up at Sam, who still seemed to be paralysed on the same stair, even as Dean started marching towards up towards him, only just stopping himself from giving Sam’s skinny frame a hard shake.

“Just what the _fuck_ did you think you were playing at back at the school?”

Sam’s face crumpled in what seemed like slow motion. “I-”

“You what, Sam? ‘Cause it sure looked to me like you used some of Dad’s army techniques that you _promised_ you’d stopped practicing.”

“I did,” Sam protested. “But you don’t exactly _forget_ how to _punch_ , Dean. And there were three of them. And besides – _you’re_ the one who got into that bar fight last week – what about that?”

“I don’t have a teacher I should go running to in a bar, now do I?”

Sam’s mouth hardened into a skinny immovable line as Dean continued his tirade. God, it shouldn’t feel this good to shout, to lay the blame for this day at someone else’s feet. Even if he had to crouch pretty damn low to do it.

“And then you fucking took off on me! What the hell was that about, huh? You were supposed to wait there for me!”

“Well, I was trying to, but-”

“I don’t wanna hear it!” Dean yelled, throwing his arms up and glaring down at his brother. The worst part was that he _knew_ that he was being a dick, that he was looking at this wrong. But he just couldn’t bring himself to care, yet. The problem was that usually the kid would have stopped him by now.  Sam had to _know_ that the minute he pulled out those puppy dog eyes or started to cry that Dean would give up, run out of steam. But all Sam was doing now was staring, and pouting horribly in a way that made him look like their Dad enough for Dean to want to yell even louder at him.

“’Cause then, _then_ you get back here and you won’t even let me in?”

He waited a beat as Sam crossed his arms and looked up at him in mock surprise. “Oh, you’re gonna let me answer this one?”

Dean turned and snarled up at the ceiling, fists clenched.

“I’ll be in my room,” Sam told him coolly, starting to walk up the stairs.

“Good! Don’t wanna see your face down here anyway,” Dean shouted back, but the venom was rapidly seeping out from his voice. “You just go into your room like a good little _introvert_ and file some X-es, Scully.”

Sam looked back, appalled, before storming into his room. “That doesn’t even make any sense!” he shouted, and the door slammed. Dean slumped back against the wall as soon as he was certain that Sam wasn’t coming out again and scowled down at the mess surrounding him. Maybe he’d call Charlie, if he could calm down enough to talk like a grown-up for five minutes. Maybe she’d know what he should do next.

Cause he sure as hell didn’t.

*

 “We’ve worked out the coordinates of where the creature is currently, and where we can expect it to land.”

Naomi sighed heavily. She’d almost managed to make herself forget about the whole fiasco, even with the council breathing down her neck continuously about it. A creature of unknown powers loosed on the universe? She’d quickly been made a laughing stock.

And the fact that this had happened under her nose, that fact that she’d actually _funded_ this thing’s creation…

“Where, Samandriel?” she asked the intercom as she started rubbing roughly at her temples.  A moment later a map flashed up on her screen. The creature’s ship was still moving fast, but it looked as though it might soon be about to land, or crash even. And the planet it was fast approaching…

“What is that?”

“The people native to it have not agreed on one name alone for it.”

Naomi scoffed. “They must be primitively argumentative then.”

“No, Ma’am. They’re more simply… numerous, and diverse in that.”

She squinted at the screen. “Their reproduction instinct must be incredible to so quickly inhabit such a large area of land… Though, most of the planet is made up of water – is that right?”

“Yes. And there are things living in the water too which we believe capable of intelligent life, but our agents are stretched thin as things are. There’s barely one covering every few settlements.

“Hmm. And their government cooperates with us on this?”

She heard Samandriel sigh. “Govern _ments_ , Ma’am. And yes, some of them, to a limited extent. But we’ve generally found it more conducive not to involve them in our affairs there.”

“Alright. So we don’t send in many to assist our nearest agent. Just whoever we’ll need.”

Unfortunately, Naomi already had some idea of who that might have to be.

*

Sam was poring over one of his Mom’s books when he heard Dean knock on his door. He knew it was Dean, he’d been past the stage for ages now when he caught himself hoping it might be one of his parents.

“Hey,” Dean said, a little sheepishly, as he walked in without waiting for Sam’s answer. But Sam couldn’t bring himself to be mad anymore. That awkward shuffle and downward look was the closest Dean ever made it to an apology, and even if Sam wasn’t sure he was ready to accept it, he recognised it for what it was and felt calmed, a little anyway.

Dean cleared his throat and thrust the plate he was plate he was holding a little closer to Sam. “Brought you a burger up, thought you might be hungry.”

“I’m not.”

Dean sat down next to him on the bed and sighed, his arm twitching like he wasn’t sure if he should try putting it round Sam or not. “You know I didn’t mean any of that shit I said back there, right?” Sam shrugged. He’d like to believe that.

“You were wrong about calling me Scully anyway. She’s the sceptic. _You’re_ Scully.”

A smile started tugging at Dean’s lips at that. “Well I am _sorry_ about not being all that up on my X-Files, ok? I just…” Dean let out a breath and slumped further back on the bed, “it’s tough, alright? I know they’d want me to be brave about all this, but I’m… I’m really not. I don’t want them to take you away.”

“Are they going to?”

Dean’s jaw hardened and Sam relaxed a little. Everything would probably be ok now that Dean was mad about something again.

“I’m not going to let them. They want me to be a better parent or whatever, then cool, I’ll make it happen.”

Sam put his book down beside him slowly and looked up at his brother. “You know I don’t want you to be, right? I don’t want you to try to be Mom, or Dad. You being my brother again’d be nice though.”

“Aw. Hold me, Sammy - that was beautiful.”

Sam shoved into his side. “Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

Sam grinned as Dean ruffled a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry about what happened at school today.”

“You wanna tell me what _did_ happen?”

Sam hesitated. “Tyson Brady called Mom and Dad freaks, so I hit him.”

“You didn’t just hit him, you broke his friggin’ nose,” Dean added, a touch proudly.

“ _Really?”_

“Yeah, apparently. Dude, seriously though, no more fighting. That’s the only time, right?”

Sam shuffled awkwardly and looked at the floor.

“ _What_?”

“Well, there was last week, when Simon… called you a faggot.” Sam noticed Dean froze slightly as he continued. “I didn’t really know what he meant but it _sounded_ like he was trying to be a jerk. So I kicked him, but then I ran away before he could start anything else.”

Dean shook his head. “You... you really need to start being less sensitive over this kind of shit, Sammy.”

“But that’s like saying they don’t matter!”

“Well then at least start finding yourself some friends to start backing you up next time! What about, uh, Andy, or Jake, or… what was that girl’s name again?”

“They all look at me different now,” Sam said quietly. “I just… I can’t stand it.”

“Yeah, I know,” Dean sighed. “I get that.”

“What do you do about it?”

“I drink.”

Sam giggled.

“No seriously. I wish I had something to say that was less _Dad_ and more responsible adult but I really, really don’t,” Dean said, starting to laugh a little himself.

“What about with Bela?”

“Oh, I need extra helpings for that one.”

Sam was _cackling_ now. He’d forgotten how good it felt to laugh this much. “Is she gonna break up with you?”

“Hey, who says she’ll break up with me?”

“You’re too lazy,” Sam told him with a shrug. “And she has _class.”_

“Just cause she’s British doesn’t make her classy, Sam.”

“Betcha five bucks she leaves you.”

“Hey-”

But Dean didn’t get to finish because Sam’s attention was on the window now.

“Is that-”

“It must be a falling star!” It didn’t really look like a comet though, Sam thought as he rushed to the window, but ignored the thought, as he looked out at the billowing green smoke lighting up the sky.

It was a few moments after the comet passed out of Sam’s view, seeming to hit remarkably closer than he’d expected it to, before he found his voice again. “Ok. Get out.”

“What?”

Sam turned to his brother with frustrated urgency. “Get outta my room, dummy. I need to wish for something – I saw it first!”

“Wow, I’m hurt, Sammy,” Dean said, pouting as he dramatically thumped a hand on his chest. “And after we were having that cutesy family moment, and now you’re kicking me out like-”

“ _OUT!”_

As soon as he was alone, Sam knelt down to pray. His Mom had taught him how, when he’d asked. None of their family had ever been very religious, but Mary had always believed that there was a God, and that it was nice to acknowledge him now and again. And when she wanted to tell Bible stories, Sam would listen, in the same way as he liked to listen to stories about Alien sightings – it was all a kind of sacred truth to Mary, a mystery that was bigger than all of them that she’d have loved to figure out one day.

Sometimes it had all become a little blurred in his heads , and Sam like to imagine that Heaven was a planet out there somewhere. Maybe if Sam ever got to be an astronaut, he’d find it one day.

“Hi…” he tried. It had been a very long time since he’d done any praying. “I’m not sure if I should aim this at you, but I don’t know who else answers shooting star wishes, so here goes. We talked tonight, me and Dean. I think our big problem is that we’re both… kinda lonely. And I know that’s really stupid, that we could be lonely together, but it seems like the only way we know how to do things – so I can’t go through the social.” Sam imagined that as a great grey building, with underground trains that left sometimes to take you someplace new, and Dean was outside not being allowed in. It seemed like Hell.

“But maybe we can’t solve that without a friend. Or _someone_ to help. Maybe – if you have any spare – you could send us like an angel, like a guardian. We kinda need all the help we can get, I think.”

*

The creature’s first experience of the planet it had found itself on was _pain_ , such a great deal of pain, and it quickly found that its body based on one of the people guarding it was not suited to the gravity here, or the gases in the atmosphere. If he couldn’t change soon, he might die.

And that still wasn’t something that the creature was interested in trying. Crawling his way out of the wreckage of his ship with difficulty, he found that one of his arms wasn’t functioning properly and that it _hurt_ and his whole body felt _heavy._

He changed quickly into the first creature he laid eyes on. It was a small, ugly looking creature, with horned bumps all over a body which appeared covered in a slimy sheen. It seemed to have four limbs, two eyes and a throat capable of making sounds much deeper than it looked like it should manage. After becoming an exact copy of it, the creature tried to communicate with its companion, tried to assert itself as its superior.

But the native seemed disinterested in that, and seemed content merely to sit there, croaking.

The creature hopped away in disgust. Would changing on this planet be so _dull_? If he was to be stranded here forever surely there had to be something to _do…_

Just as the thought ran through the creature’s currently very small brain, he felt himself painfully lifted off its new webbed feet and slammed  down hard onto the ground. Now _everything_ hurt,and though the creature knew how quickly it should be able to heal, he still felt a simmering _rage_ all through him at this giant metal _beast_ that had come crashing into him like that. Well, the creature would simply have to destroy it, he thought logically. He would grow bigger, he would wreck revenge, he would –

*

Jimmy Novak had been in a hurry to get out of Lawrence, Kansas, and make his way home. He’d promised his wife that he’d make it home before it got too late so that he’d be able to read their baby a story before she slept, and it was already dark. As a travelling salesman, he was forced to be away from home a great deal, and since Claire had been born he’d started to resent it, the constant feeling of homelessness, of loneliness. So he was barely even watching the road when he felt his old car _bump_ into something on the road.

Jimmy immediately stopped the car. Oh God. That had felt _sturdy_ – whatever it had been. What if he’d hit some small child’s pet – or something even larger?

_Oh God…_

Jimmy raced out of his car, searching the road in the dark for whatever it was he’d hit. Certainly nothing seemed obvious, and there was no blood around that he’d noticed so far….

After all his searching, Jimmy nearly trod on his victim. “Oh,” he breathed aloud. “Just a toad,” he said, before immediately regretting it. It was certainly good that it hadn’t been a pet dog that he’d hit, but a toad was still one of God’s creations, and it seemed that he’d just killed it. He should take this as a lesson to drive more carefully, he thought as he bent down next to it, and was wondering whether he should put the poor creature out of its misery when he watched it open one eye. Which… didn’t look like an eye that should belong to a toad. It was bright blue, and seemed almost to be glowing…

The next thing Jimmy knew he was toppled back on the ground, the toad had gone, and a lifesize copy of _himself_ was standing over him, raising its arms and _hissing_ at him.

“P-please don’t hurt me,” he managed. “Just get away from me.”

The creature smirked down at him with his own lips, and then started to limp away from him.

Forgetting instantly about his new resolve to drive more slowly, Jimmy raced off down the highway at twice the speed he’d been moving at before as soon as he was able to get the car started.

*

The creature liked his second body he’d assumed since reaching the planet he’d crashed on far better than his first. This one was physically far more imposing, it had a much larger brain and the apparent ability to tame the roaring metal beasts. It would keep to this form as much as he was able, he decided, as he stumbled closer towards the lights from the settlement, where a whole host of unfamiliar minds already whispered to him. A built up area, that was exactly what he sought. The ability to learn  how the infrastructure of this planet worked, to see what chaos he would be capable of wrecking…

But he would be managing none of that just yet, the creature realised as he wondered whether this planet would always be so dark . There was a patch of vegetation nearby, and he gratefully used it to lie down on. If anything tried to bother him again, he would force them to leave him. It had seemed to work with his last assailant…

Then an animal much like the form he had taken for himself was bending over him, with a smaller, hairier creature on some sort of leash beside it, which had started to sniff at him.

The creature growled at the leashed animal to back off, but when that didn’t seem to work, he took on a form identical to it, and started growling again. That seemed to work, for both the tall and the smaller creature. They knew who would be in charge around here now, the creature thought smugly before his four legs buckled beneath him and he lost consciousness.

*


	3. Puppy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a movie, it's often important to have aliens whose gestures and facial expressions can be 'read' by humans. And in the days before sophisticated computer animation, most extraterrestrial bit players were guys in rubber suits. Such practical considerations forced Hollywood's hand when it came to aliens - they look like us for good reasons.  
> Seth Shostak

Dean had no idea what he was doing. Or, rather, _why_ he was doing what he was doing. He didn’t even _like_ dogs. They were messy, and smelly, and he didn’t need any more of that in the house with a social worker he still needed to impress.

But Sam had just sounded so damn _lost_ last night, wishing on stars and begging God for a friend - because of course  Dean had listened at the door, snooping was basically there in his job description. And Dean wished – there was that word again, damn near _contagious_ , like wishing and hoping ever actually did anyone any good – that he could just go out and _buy_ his little brother a friend already, but that wasn’t something people were all that ok with these days. For like, good reason and all that.

But a dog… apparently that was the next best thing. And with any luck, it would at least give the kid something to do while he was off school, and something to help watch his back. Dean didn’t want to hear about any more fights, not if he couldn’t guarantee that Sam would stay the victor of them.

So here they were at the local animal shelter. Because Sam’s face had lit up like a fucking Christmas tree as soon as Dean had mentioned the idea. “So what kind of dog we getting?” Dean asked as the climbed up the steps side by side.

Sam smiled, still looking thoughtful. “We should get one of those older dogs, y’know? Like that no one else wants so that they don’t have to get put down. We can _rescue_ them, Dean.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “You kinda have a complex, y’know that, kid?”

“Well, you have internalised self-loathing, so screw you.”

“Who said that?”

“Ellen.”

“Ah.”

The bell at the door to the pound rang out loud and cheerfully to announce their arrival, and a sleepy head of brown hair lifted itself off the reception desk at the sound. “Hey… Dean! And Sam, how you guys doing?”

Dean had forgotten Garth worked here – how had he forgotten that? It was damn near all the guy had used to talk about in high school when he’d just been a volunteer and he’d surprised no one when he’d stayed on to take the job there. Garth loved people, but they weren’t always so sure what to make of him. “Not bad, Garth. Sammy’s here for a dog.”

“Oh we got lots of dogs,” Garth said, nodding as he raised a hand to start counting fingers. “Plus a chinchilla, a few cats, oh, and a couple of boas now - wanna see?”

“No, that’s alright,” Dean said quickly.

“Why don’t you go in, look ‘em all out, Sam,” Garth urged after releasing Sam from a smothering hug.

“Hurry,” Dean mouthed at him, as Garth started gesturing for a hug from Dean. Sam grinned wickedly as he slipped past the reception.

“So – how _are_ you _really_ doing, Dean-O?” Garth asked, and at the dripping genuine sympathy in his voice Dean had to try very hard at repressing the urge to run after his brother.

Maybe he wasn’t all that great at people either.

*

Since the creature had woken up in a cell he had decided to take his time before figuring out what his next move would be. Though it was already healing quickly it still felt… vulnerable, and the feeling was both unfamiliar and deeply unpleasant. The other animals it had been penned in with, which all appeared to be vaguely the same species as the form of the leashed animal he had taken on, did not see capable of much in the way  of intelligent thought, and certainly not conversation. There _was_ intelligence there, admittedly, but there was simply no _guile_ , no motivations going beyond the simplistic, and spending too much time listening to their minds made the creature uncomfortable.

It was the taller two-legged creatures that here seemed to possess the power, the control over this infrastructure he had as yet glimpsed so little of, so when the creature eventually decided that he would be leaving this place, it was that form he would be coming back to. Only… he had not yet seen any animal small enough to escape this prison, which was, if he was honest with himself, the real reason he hadn’t yet left it.

And then the door opened and a small one of the two-legs – a child among them, perhaps – walked in. The creature moved closer towards his cage bars to get a better look at him, which made the other animals step back. They were, quite rightly, afraid of him.

“Hey, boy,” the young one said, approaching him. “How’s it going?” it said, and reached out a hand towards him. Why did he ask the question, the creature wondered, if he didn’t expect an answer to it?

As he stared at the pale, un-calloused hand the creature thought briefly about snapping his teeth at it to warn it back, but for some reason that action seemed… wrong. Wrong to reward that innocent gesture of trust, of belief, with pain and fear. So, more out of confusion than anything else, the creature allowed the young male to stroke at the top of his head, and was surprised to find that the sensation it created was not unpleasant.

But the creature did not _plan_ on being anyone’s _pet –_ not anymore. It needed _respect_ and it needed to get out of here.

With a thought, the creature had returned to its earlier, two-legged form. Assumedly, the young one would respect an elder. But when he looked down at the boy, it was not the contentment he had earlier felt from him, nor respect – not exactly, anyway. He felt awe, coming off of the boy in waves.

“Wow,” the child breathed. “What are you?”

Though the interest was gratifying, it was escape which the creature needed to be turning his focus to. So he stared into the child’s mind, searching for the right way of communicating his necessary message, before stiltedly ordering him, “Think of something small.”

Obediently, the child’s thoughts turned quickly to something small, scaly and scampering and the creature hummed his approval before shrinking, changing himself.

“You can read minds,” the child gasped, now looking down at him. “That’s so _cool._ ”

Again, the admiration was mollifying, but the creature was anxious to see some more of this world it had arrived in. So he moved his four legs quickly over the tiled floor and out of the door, out of the building, felt fresh air again press into his lungs. He was _free_ again…

And he was very, very close to being caught in the laser beam shot in his direction. Too close. Only by hearing the loud, jubilant and very familiar thoughts of his creator had the creature been able to scamper away out of sight again.

“You can’t hide for long, little one,” he heard that voice he’d so quickly come to loathe shout out above him. “We have council assistance now, my freedom’s on the line here, and I _will_ catch you. You might as well start giving up now…”

The creature stuck his tongue out at the sky and scampered quickly back into the building he’d just exited, and as he ran over the ceiling, he took notice of the men below him. One was small, with an amiable expression and dark flopping hair. The other was taller, and seemed to have the most perfect physical symmetry the creature had yet seen here. And his eyes, and his thoughts they were mired in… sadness, which did not fit the smile he wore so well.

The boy was still there where he’d left him when the creature returned to him, and retook its taller, two-legged form. At the first sight of him, the boy started grinning. “You came back!” Then he bit down on his lip, as though embarrassed. “You’re, uh… you’re not from around here are you?” he asked, cocking his head to the side, seemingly unafraid, which was odd. Most other creatures seemed to have an instinctive fear of him whatever form he chose.

“No,” he said. “I crashed here.”

The child nodded. “ _You_ were my star.”

“What?”

“Nothing. So you’re an alien?”

The creature sought for meaning in the child’s brain. “Yes,” he said eventually. “To you, yes, I am.”

The child nodded again, impressing the creature despite himself by his seeming intelligence and even temperament. “I knew,” he said simply. “Why did you come back here?”

“Because I am being hunted. By other ‘aliens’ who wish to kill me.”

“Your people?”

The creature smiled slightly at the assumption. “I have no people.”

“Oh. That sounds lonely.”

The creature tipped his head to the side, feeling a little confused. “No. I suppose I was built for solitude.”

“Ok.” The child’s mind worked quickly through what it seemed to regard as a problem. “Would they harm me?”

“No, their laws would prevent them from doing so.”

“Right. Well then, why don’t you be a dog again, and come home with us. We’ll help you – we can be your protection, for now.”

The creature narrowed his eyes in suspicion as he bent his knees to look the child straight in the eye. “Why?” he asked.

The child shrugged. “Because you’re all alone and you need help,” he said simply, as though that were reason enough. And it seemed that to this boy it was. “And because you’re really interesting,” the boy added in a rush.

The creature nodded, satisfied. “I am,” he agreed, as the child held out a limb, apparently in a belated form of greeting.

“I’m Sam Winchester. What’s your name?”

Slowly, the creature took the digits offered and shook them as the child seemed to expect. No one had ever tried to greet him before. “I was not given a name. I did not need one.”

“Well, you’re gonna need one here,” the child, Sam Winchester, explained sternly. “I’ll think of something cool, don’t worry.”

The creature nodded once and retook its hairier form with the fifth wagging limb. A dog, Sam had called it.

“There,” the child said, grinning. “Now follow me, and please don’t act too weird. My brother would freak and then we’d have more things after us than your aliens.”

The creature moved its tail experimentally in response, which seemed to please the child. And for some reason, knowing that his actions had brought pleasure rather than terror or disgust was oddly satisfying.

*

“…so if you ever wanna get the band back together, I’d be happy looking after Sam for a night or two.”

“Thanks, Garth. I, uh, I appreciate that. But, uh. The band never actually stopped. I mean they found a new lead guitar, and he’s sorta better than me.”

“Oh yeah, Ash, sure I met him,” Garth said nodding, passively agreeing that Dean’s replacement really _was_ better than he’d been. He certainly had more of that rock star _style_ that just wouldn’t ever have worked for Dean…

“But he’s a cool guy, and I know he wouldn’t mind the company. And what about all that kickass Pink Floyd stuff that needs two guitars?”

“Like I say, Garth-”

But then  Dean stopped because Sam had finally walked out with his find. Which, for a start, was weird. Who had been back there to let the dog out?

“Thought you were looking for an older dog?”

Sam shrugged, and put his hand down on the wolfhound’s – it was a wolfhound, right? – with unshakeable solidarity.

“Oh, our new guy,” Garth said, slowly smiling. “I think this fella has to be some kinda husky cross, cause I ain’t never seen eyes like that on a wolfhound before. It’s like they _glow_ right?”

Dean nodded slowly, still not getting to his feet. Yup. They didn’t look like eyes that belonged on _any_ dog. Maybe on a snake, or a cat. Or a human that had magically figured out how to download your bank details from your brain just by looking at you. But at the same time they were difficult to look away from, almost like…

And then Dean had to remind himself that he was looking at a fucking dog.

“So… uh, what’s his name?” Dean asked eventually instead of yelling at Sam to put the freaky dog-thing back where he found it before it murdered them both in their sleep. Because Charlie had given him orders, and they were to start listening to Sam more, and if he kept failing in that then she was definitely gonna do her best to _talk_ him to death.

“I think…” Sam started, looking uncertainly down at the dog, who was cocking its head to the side like it was listening and waiting.

Trust Sam to pick the weird-ass creepy dog.

“Castiel,” Sam said eventually.

Dean tried for a smile. “That some kinda alien name?”

Sam’s face shut down. “No. It’s like the angel.”

Dean nodded, remembering the strange little prayer he’d overheard the night before and wondering if Henrickson was right, and they did need therapy. “Okay. So Sam, why not bring your pal Cas out to the car, teach him not to mess it up, and I’ll give Garth some money for him, ok?”

“It’s _Castiel_ ,” Sam corrected darkly and left, looking strangely nervous with his dog obediently following at his heels.

“So are uh, _wolfhounds_ , they easy to train? Because I was really just gonna leave that side of things up to Sam…”

“Y’know you will need to take on some sort of responsibility for it too, Dean,” Garth warned him, sounding unusually stern. “You’ll need him to respect you too.”

Dean stood up, waving a dismissive hand. “Easy. I’m totally respectable.”

*

Kevin Tran was having a bad day. Admittedly he’d really just been having a bad time of it ever since his Mom took work as a council agent on some planet no one had even heard of before and left him alone on the council command ship. Sometimes it had seemed kind of amazing, obviously, being independent for the first time in his life, but all too frequently everything had just turned up to be so much _harder_ with no one to go and shout at his boss if they were working too hard or to be there to cook his favourite meals when he needed them. And, yeah, it hadn’t been all that long till he’d missed her, too. So he’d jumped at the chance originally, at the offer (alright, _order_ ) to visit her on a mission for the council – it was a great chance for his career too.

But currently all it felt like a great chance to do was have his ear talked off by what was probably the most loathsome character in all existence. Kevin had barely even ever come into contact with Crowley back on the Council ship, but the little he had seen of the guy had made him feel pretty good when he heard the guy was getting a life sentence. But now the slimeball scientist had managed to dodge that, and was being sent down to chase after his own messes, and could be getting out of prison altogether as a reward. Even with their camouflage image projection technology allowing them to blend in with the local dominant species, Kevin still thought his partner’s face looked onerous, and even worse for its currently hideously smug expression.

“It’ll come out again soon,” Crowley muttered with a smile as he stared down a pair of lenses he’d developed which allowed him to view his creation in whichever form it took. “It’ll have to. And probably on the attack this time, not just slinking about like prey.”

“Please shut up already,” Kevin groaned, wishing he could back that up with a stronger order. But since he was technically only there to monitor and not hold any authority over the inventor, he didn’t. Technically it was his Mom supposed to be in charge of the operation, this being her territory. And between giving him over the camouflage she’d picked out for him and fussing over how skinny he’d gotten, she’d been very clear on how they were to carry out their mission: get it done quickly, without drawing attention to themselves, or harming anyone.

“They might be foolish, but they have a great deal of cunning, and ruthlessness,” she said of her humans. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“And you care about them too,” Kevin had pointed out, while Crowley started to turn over all the small gadgets in her room over, muttering something about primitive grasps of science.

“There,” Crowley was saying now. “Next to the boy.”

“I see,” Kevin said, then quickly grew alarmed as he watched his partner begin to raise his gun. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Crowley?”

Crowley shrugged and wriggled himself into a more appropriate sniper position. “What I’m here for. My freedom for my monster’s capture and-or death. Fair enough trade.”

Rolling his eyes, Kevin got a grip on the scientist’s shoulders. “You can’t do that here in broad daylight out in front of the natives who you might _hit_ ,” Kevin hissed.

“Well, Kev, it might not be on regulation lines, but no one needs to know…”

“ _I_ know!”

“Oh and I guess you’ll go running straight over to your Mummy with that information?”

As they continued to argue, Kevin noticed out of the corner of his eye that the quarry they were fighting over could apparently hear them since it started wriggling its furry body and making a loud, gleeful barking noise.

“Sammy, if its gonna make that kinda racket every time it goes outside I dunno if I can do this,” said an adult human now walking out of the building behind the boy.

Well that was _it_. Kevin decided. Now there was practically a _crowd._

They’d just have to wait for a better opportunity.


	4. Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The attitude of insolent haughtiness is characteristic of the relationships Americans form with what is alien to them, with others.” Jose Saramago

“So you know the drill, right?”

Sam nodded up from the sidewalk at Dean, who was already turning the car back on. “I’ve got my ten dollars and we’ll stay out of trouble. I’ve got the house keys. Have you?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Bitch.” Then he had to start searching through his pockets frantically before eventually  producing them from his jeans. “Yes, I do.”

“Great,” Sam said, with all the sarcasm he could muster. “Say hi to Rufus for me.”

“Yeah, yeah. Tell him yourself at dinner.”

And then Dean drove off and Sam was left alone on the sidewalk. With Castiel.

With a real live _alien._

Sam glanced about to check that they really were alone before saying to the dog, “Ok, you’re good to change,” and a moment later his alien was a tall guy a bit older than Dean, maybe, with dark hair and an ill-fitting suit. But he still had those same weird eyes, whatever he changed into, and a few moments after he’d changed, they stopped looking so much like they were glowing.

Castiel breathed in deeply with what looked like relish. “I like these lungs better,” he stated.

Sam laughed. “Wow. Just… wow.”

The alien smiled slightly, and Sam thought it seemed a little like he was preening. “So can all aliens do stuff like that or is it just you?”

Castiel shrugged. “The ‘aliens’ I know of are able to appear differently, but only through concentrated technological illusion. As far as I am aware, nothing else shares in my abilities.”

“You said you were _created_ …”

“Yes. And now my creator hunts me.”

“Right. Kinda like Frankenstein, except you’re much cooler,” Sam added quickly. The alien just stared at him then for a few moments, probably trying to read his mind.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” he said eventually, and Sam thought that he sounded tired. He hoped badly that he hadn’t offended him. His parents would be so mad at him. Five minutes as an earthly emissary and he was already pissing off the visitors.

“So… can you turn into _anything_?”

The alien shrugged. “I expect so. Anything I’ve seen, at least. I don’t think I was given much of an imagination, in some ways.”

Sam thought for a moment. “How about a bird?”

“I’m not your entertainer,” the alien said coolly.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that! I just thought you might like flying… just not too far away, so you don’t get in danger,” he added hurriedly.

Castiel nodded stoically. “Fine. Think of a bird for me.”

Sam screwed up his face, and a moment later there was a large raven flapping its wings around him and cawing loudly. Sam laughed, “That is never getting old,” and then after a few minutes the man was back.

“That was… strangely exhilarating. More enjoyable than flying a ship, at least.”

“You flew here on a _spaceship_?” As Sam felt his eyes grow wide he could have sworn that something in the alien’s twinkled.

“Did you assume I’d walked here?”

“Well, no, but… wow. Could you tell me about it? And where you came from?”

The alien looked a little haughty for a moment before seeming to deflate. “What would you like to know?”

Sam quickly forgot all about the food they had the money to buy as they sat down on a bench and the alien found his words to speak. He’d never spoken English before meeting Sam, he explained, so much of the words he was using were coming directly from Sam’s head (which was so awesome). He’d really never spoken much to anyone in any language before, actually. His creator had spoken a little, which was enough for Castiel to decide that he didn’t like him, and very soon after that he’d been sentenced to death.

“You couldn’t just do that here,’ Sam said, aghast. “Not unless you’d done something wrong.”

“Even for something like me?”

Sam hesitated under the intensity of those eyes. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen something like you before,” he said honestly. “But if it _was_ allowed then it wouldn’t be right.”

“And being ‘right’ – what do you mean by that? You seem to apply various connotations to the word.”

Sam licked his lips over, concentrating. “It’s like, what’s supposed happen.”

The alien squinted his eyes. “Like the victory of a higher power, life moving to a schedule?”

“No, like…” Sam felt stuck. “Like what God would want you to do.”

“What is God?”

“He made us.”

“Like my creator did me?”

“Well yeah, but not…” Sam felt like he was confusing himself as much as he was Castiel at this point.

“You don’t know,” Castiel said, his voice seeming softer.

“He wants us to love other people, I think. And to help everyone.”

“Everyone? That sounds like an impossibly large task.”

“Well, that’s what doing the right thing is all about,” Sam finished, relieved.

“And would it continue to be the ‘right’ thing if this God did not tell you to do this? And how often does he issue his orders to you?”

But before Sam had to figure out a way of answering that, he was saved by the person walking past them, who stopped next to their bench. “Hello, Sam.”

Sam looked up and his heart sunk a little. Bela. Right. He _wanted_ to like Bela, but most of the time she just ended up confusing him. She usually wanted to know something he didn’t know the answers to, and not in a fun way like with Cas.

Dammit, Dean had him calling him that too.

“Hey, Bela.”

“Who’s your friend?”

…and here came the questions already. Sam gulped. “No one. I mean, he’s someone…”

“Someone your brother’s now sleeping with, by any chance?” Bela smiled indulgently, and sat down on the other side of Sam, rolling her eyes. “Well, at least this gives me a way of being the injured party,” she mused to herself.

“No – you _really_ don’t understand – Cas is our, our… cousin,” Sam finished, feeling helpless under Bela’s iron stare. Dean was gonna kill him for this.

But hey, it was starting to look as though Sam might be getting to collect on his bet…

“Cousin, huh?” Bela winked at Sam and ruffled his hair about. “You’re a sweet kid, y’know that Sam? Dean doesn’t deserve you.”

“Dean would _never_ cheat on you.”

Bela shrugged. “We were gonna be over anyway, chill, Sam. Not your fault – alright?” Then she turned to look over at the alien. “So what’s your name, cousin?”

Cas stared at her for a long time before answering. “Castiel,” he said eventually. “Though some call me Cas.”

“Hmm. Cute name. I’m Bela, and I’m leaving,” she added, getting to her feet, “but it was nice meeting you.”

“It was… interesting to meet you too.”

She winked again, though Sam thought she looked a little tired now. “You didn’t know about the other woman, huh? Sorry for the shock. I’ll see you around, Sam.”

Sam sighed dramatically and flopped back on the bench. “Well that could have gone worse, I guess.”

The alien peered at him. “This was ‘not right’, as you would say?”

Sam laughed. “No. Though… they were only really together for the sex,” Sam said knowledgeably. “Dean told me. It’s not like they even liked each other that much. Plus I think it made some of the dicks who’d annoy him forget about the whole ‘bi’ thing.”

“And what does that mean.?”

“Oh. Like… he’s bisexual. He likes women and men. For Dean it means that if someone’s hot he probably wants to sleep with them.”

The alien screwed up his face as though trying to work out a puzzle.

“It’s cool. Dad never got it either.”

“No, not that part. What was it you meant by ‘sex’ and ‘sleep with’?”

Sam’s shoulders sagged. “Uh…” Having the sex talk with an alien was not the one he was wanting, of all the things they could be talking about. But he guessed it was probably pretty understandable, seen as Cas was being a grown up, and most grown-ups seemed incapable of ever thinking of much else for more than five minutes at a time.

Although he was also starting to wonder how much Cas was just enjoying teasing him.

*

Castiel decided that he liked ice cream. He had never had much interest in food before, but this was more delicate, and yet more extreme in flavour than anything Crowley had ever shoved into his cell. In fact, he realised now that he was actually very hungry, and that this solitary cone of liquid-based foods would simply not fill him.

“What food would you recommend we try now, Sam?”

The boy’s face lit up. It was a strange and wonderful thing, to know that he had put that smile on Sam’s face simply by being there, and for what he sensed was a rare occurrence in the boy’s life – in ceding him a choice. “Well, you haven’t tried pizza yet…” Cas waited. “Yeah. We should try pizza.”

Yes it was wonderful, but somehow saddening, how easy it was to make this child happy.

As they walked over to Sam’s point of pizza pilgrimage, Cas allowed the boy to ask him questions about what kind of ship he had flown there in, about how his creator had formed him, about what ‘time zone’ he thought that where he had come from would be in now, about what kind of government his creator’s people worked under. Most of the questions he was not able to provide a full answer with, but again, the boy seemed happy enough to hear him speak at all, and to listen to his questions in the first place. Sam had too few people in his life able to do that for him, Cas sensed.

“Is that smell the pizzas?”

“Yup! Smells great, right?”

Mostly Cas smelt grease and sweat and cheap materials. And yet something about the aroma was, nevertheless, ‘great’.

“Oh crap,” Sam breathed as they came near to the doors of the shop. “Uh, we can’t go in there.”

“Why not?” But Cas could understand already from the flashing visions of panic running through Sam’s mind, along with a certainty laced in there as a mantra in his brother’s voice that he couldn’t get into any more fights.

“Tyson’s in there,” Sam murmured aloud. “I forgot the schools were out by now.”

But it seemed they might have the chance to enter the shop anyway, as the group of boys were already exiting, stained cardboard boxes clutched firmly in hand. And then when they caught sight of Sam, the one at the front, Tyson, started to grin in a way he clearly hoped would seem threatening.

“Aw look, Sammy’s got himself a babysitter. Do ‘special’ kids like you need watching now, Sammy?”

Sam pursed his lips and held his ground. “How’s your nose doing?”

“Oh, it’ll be feeling much better once I see you again at school,” he said, small eyes darting up to look at Cas.

Cas could see the effort it was taking for Sam not to react to the fight-or-flight impulses currently driving him and stand his ground. And he wanted to help, but in this form he sensed that there was little he could do, or at least, little to keep Sam from being threatened again in the future. Unless…

“Sam,” Cas said, not looking away from the boys in front of them. “Can you think of an animal that might be more frightening than this form?”

Sam looked up at him in confusion, but nonetheless an image flashed through his mind. Castiel grinned savagely, and let his body change… And then he roared, being the ‘tiger’ he had seen in Sam’s mind.

The children screamed and ran away, and it took some willpower not to chase them down and feast on them, finally feeding himself that way. But he knew without having to think too hard that this would not be an action Sam could support. It would not be ‘right’.

So, sniffing, Cas became human again, and smiled down at Sam. “You think that worked alright?”

It took some time before Sam’s jaw snapped closed again .

*

Dean was having a strange day. Tuesday had just been bad, but Wednesday was turning out to be  whole new levels of fucked up. First had come the weird dog, but then he’d gotten into work and everything there at least had seemed normal again. The bar and grill got pretty busy through lunch time as usual. It was the people who were acting strange.

One kid had rushed in crying, couldn’t have been that much younger than Sam – old enough to know better anyway – and Dean had been forced to hunt out the first aid kit after she’d apparently tried jumping off the stairs thinking she could fly.

“We’ve all been there,” Dean had laughed to her grateful parents, but it had been kinda unnerving the way she’d been so damn certain that she’d already seen someone turn into a bird that day, and didn’t see why the same thing wouldn’t work for her.

Kids were weird. But then so were the adults. After the schools got out, Ellen came in to have a talk with Dean about Sam’s suspension, and then praised him for getting Sam a dog.

“Yeah. Seemed like he needed someone else around.”

“Just so long as you’re sure that Rottweiler’s safe having around a young kid. I mean they can be unpredictable beasts as is, but one straight out of the shelter…”

Dean snorted into the dishwasher he was still trying to unload. “Uh, think you got the wrong kid there, Ellen. You know Sam, right? Yay height, hair like a mop, bitchface on him to make God feel judged and last time I checked he was in your class?”

She rolled her eyes. “Believe me. I know that kid as well as my own. And I know my dogs, too.”

“Well _I_ know what I picked up from the pound today,” Dean asserted hotly as he poured out he drink. “And it was some kinda lanky old hairy cross. It was _not_ an attack dog.”

“Uh-huh,” Ellen, said, and got up looking at him like she was talking to an idiot until she left. But when she got to the door, a kid who looked vaguely familiar hopped up the steps towards her.

“Miss! You gotta get Sam expelled now – he, he-”

The look on the kid’s face was one of pure terror, but Dean felt no sympathy as he came out from behind the bar and stood next to Ellen and looked down at him, arms folded.

“Sam _Winchester_?”

The kid nodded, speechless.

Dean glanced at Ellen. “This the Brady kid?”

She nodded, a spark of amusement in her eye amidst the teacherly concern. “Tyson, what happened? What’s got you all spooked?”

“Sam Winchester tried to kill me with a tiger!”

Ellen blinked once, then not missing a beat, she said calmly, “A tiger. Now, Tyson, d’you wanna try saying that one aloud one more time?”

Dean couldn’t hold back the small gasp of laughter, but then the look of pure frustrated rage on the kid’s face before he ran off with a snarl made it worth it. Ellen shook her head. “I swear, these kids all think I was born yesterday. Christ…”

“If that kid made another pass at Sam…”

She laid a hand on his arm. “I’ll deal with it. But my guess is that your boy’s fine, and that young Mr Brady there saw me coming out of a drinking establishment and figured me an easy mark. I doubt he even saw Sam.”

“Right,” Dean nodded, but resolved to call his brother the next time he got five minutes to sit down. But the bar stayed busy all day, and the one moment it seemed to have died down enough for Dean to take a break, in walked Bela and he forgot all about the Brady kid’s ‘tiger’.

They both worked a lot, so didn’t usually spend a lot of time together during the day – which was one of the reasons they hadn’t made the thing between them ‘official’ until it went on so long that it had felt ridiculous not to. But it was alright – they weren’t exactly together because they wanted to hang out or whatever. But then, Dean always got the impression that Bela never really spent time with people just for the company.

“What can I do for you, Ma’am?” he asked, switching up the charm, more to show off that he could than out of any hope that it might work.

“Hmm,” she said, sitting down at the bar in front of him. “Well, I guess a decent woman would demand an explanation of some kind, but then I’ve never really been all that decent, have I?” She looked up at him lazily, her eyes burning with a whole list of questions he already knew he wouldn’t have the answer to. “But then, neither are you. I guess that’s why we seemed to work so well.”

Dean blinked, and leaned down towards her. “I’m sorry. I think I missed the part where we needed to start using the past tense, here.”

She rolled those gorgeous cat eyes and got to her feet again. “I told you. Threesomes were a maybe. Cheating was a no. If you needed dick in your life so badly you could have just fucking ended things, it’s not like we were ever that serious.”

Dean tried desperately to process what she was saying as he became aware that other people around them were now doing the same, sensing a show. “Bela, I didn’t-”

“Save it, please. I mean – your _cousin_?”

“What? I don’t even _have_ a fucking cousin-”

“Well, exactly,” she snapped. “And have fun with that social worker. I _was_ calling you yesterday to offer to show up and play the helpful girlfriend, but I think I’ll hold back on that one now.”

“Wait, Bela-” Dean stalked out from behind the bar, something close to panic fluttering in his chest as he started to realise that this was _actually happening_. Emotionally, it wouldn’t be such a blow, only… it had always been great sex, but more than that, what they had slowly turned into something important because Dean just didn’t have all that many constants in his life these days, at least not ones that didn’t have something to do with Sam.

“Just… talk to me, for _two_ seconds here - I really haven’t got a fucking idea-”

“Stop lying, Dean, please,” she told him, her voice cool. But he could see the hurt in her eyes too, and he knew that somehow he’d put that there. “He was exactly your type. I really wouldn’t care, except that I never should have let this turn into some kind of _relationship_ in the first place.” She shuddered. “Only I let myself think for a minute there that there might actually be more to you than a good lay.”

And then she walked off.

“I don’t get it. One minute I think we’re fine, put a label on the whole thing and everything, and the next minute she tries telling me I’ve cheated on her. She’s never even acted jealous before, I just don’t get what her problem is,” Dean told Sam later as he served him up his burger. It was the deal Dean had managed to wrangle out of Rufus since the guy had known them so long, and could be a soft touch so long as you knew which heartstrings to pull on, that whenever Dean worked late, Sam ate there free. The dog had been a tricky new clause to negotiate in there, but Sam had insisted, so Dean had hustled them through, telling Rufus to pretend to anyone who asked that his brother was blind.

“The weirdest part is that she didn’t know the guy’s name – which is weird ‘cause she definitely said he was hot. And I thought Bela knew every passable looking guy in town.”

San was looking like the chair he was sitting on was covered in nails.

“What’s up with you? You didn’t even like her much – did you? And hey, you won that dumb bet…”

Sam opened and shut his mouth a few times and stared at the dog (which was definitely _not_ a bloodhound, thank you, Ellen). Dean sighed. Kid had issues.

“So what were you guys up to today?”

Sam’s face brightened up immediately. “Oh, it was awesome! I took Cas around town, and I made him try ice cream. And pizza. He liked that. He liked coffee better though.”

Dean raised an eyebrow as he picked up Sam’s finished glass of milkshake. “You gave the dog coffee?”

“No, well, uh…” Sam smiled helplessly. “Just a little?”

Dean groaned. “Everyone’s being so fucking _weird_ today. Right. Eat your veg or whatever.”

“Then dessert?”

“C’mon, Sam, y’had a milkshake already-”

“Cas hasn’t tried any yet!”

“Good! He’s a _dog_.” But at the plaintive look on Sam’s face, Dean rolled his eyes and gave in, watching the dog start wagging its tail on cue. People always _said_ that dogs were good listeners, but this one was definitely _eerie._

“ _Fine_. But if you kill or spoil this pet by feeding it wrong then this is so not on me.”

Up until the end of the night, Dean felt like he was finally settling back into the rhythm of a normal shift – things were busy, but not mobbed; Charlie came in for five minutes to complain about her boss and ask about his changed facebook status and ask why he got a dog when he hates dog, while the dog itself was seeming to be pretty well-behaved. Until twenty minutes before closing when all the screaming started. Over at Ms Tran’s table, of all places.

“Hey!” Dean shouted as soon as he noticed what was going on, laying down his tray with the intent to stop the commotion. The dog, which up till now really had seemed to be acting the perfect model of canine docility, now had his jaw clamped firmly around the wrist of the principal’s male friend. The other guy at the table, who looked as though he might the son Ms Tran had mentioned was, instead of helping, scraping a hand back through his black hair and shouting at his unfortunate companion, whose arm had started to bleed. Only – it had to be the light, but the blood didn’t look red… And there was Sam in the middle of it all, running over to smash a plate over the head of his dog’s victim and snarling like a small animal.

Dean ran over and swooped his brother up in his arms, and put him down firmly back on his chair before turning his attention to the dog. “Sorry about… this, Ms Tran,” he said as he grabbed the dog, doing his best to loosen its iron grip. Then the man being attacked actually _growled_ at Dean through gritted teeth, saying, “get back, boy.” And Dean heard this zapping noise, and suddenly Cas had gone limp in his arms.

“Dean, this is a friend of my son’s,” Ms Tran started telling him slowly in the restaurant’s sudden quiet, slowly, as though Dean was the dog and she was trying her best not to spook him.

Dean glanced between the man now clutching at his arm and her son. They looked like a very strangely matched pair of ‘friends’.

“He’s a… pet inspector, and he thinks there might be something wrong with your dog that he doesn’t want to expose Sam to. Let him take the dog, Dean.”

Dean looked down at the dog in his arms. Cas sure seemed a lot more fragile now he was unconscious.

“Dean you can’t!” Sam shouted, and quickly burst into tears. “He _needs_ us.”

Dean sighed heavily. Screw having a weird day, this was just turning into one more full on terrible day.

And what the fuck was a ‘pet inspector’ supposed to be? It sounded made up. And what had he just done to the dog? It was still breathing, but the breaths were shallow, and too far apart.

“I’m very sorry about whatever just happened there, sir,” Dean said slowly, still looking at his dog. “But other than all that the dog seems healthy enough to me. Sammy, why don’t you go take him home?”

“Alone?” Ms Tran asked, pointedly, as the ‘pet inspector’ snorted.

“I wouldn’t leave an armed soldier alone with that thing,” he asserted.

Dean looked carefully back at his brother who was shaking his head wildly. “He’s lying, Dean. Cas has been good all day. He was just trying to get away from them!”

“What the hell is going on here, Dean?” Dean heard Rufus hiss at his ear. “Did your dog just go making all that racket?”

Dean tightened his jaw and turned around to face his boss, who was standing moodily with his arms folded across his chest.

“It’s handled, Rufus.”

“It’s _handled_? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that the dog’s leaving now and I won’t take it back here again, alright?”

“Alright? No – not alright, boy!”

Dean was starting to get awful tired of getting called boy every other minute, he thought as he clung tighter to the dog, who was starting to stir, and watched Rufus shake his head. “Hell, if it wasn’t for fear of Bobby rising out of his grave and killing me in my sleep I’d be firing you right about now.”

Dean clenched his jaw and put Cas down, who shakily got back on his feet. “Well, I’ll just save you the trouble then,” Dean told him. “C’mon, Sam. We’re getting outta here.”

The restaurant watched them go in silence.

*

The place where Sam and his brother lived seemed large to house only the two of them, Cas thought as Dean drove them up the drive. The isolated area filled with trees surrounding the house worried Cas slightly, but he hoped that his creator might have learned better than to attack again, at least so soon.

But then perhaps it was appropriate that they had an unusual place to live – of the family units he had so far observed, Cas had not seen any quite like them.

And now they seemed to be arguing again, Cas noticed after they came into the house. It was so easy to tune out conversation as a dog, despite his heightened hearing. “We don’t even know what to _do_ with a dog, Sammy,” the older one, Dean, was saying as he flopped down into a chair. “And this one seems pretty much insane – Garth’d take him back, no problem.”

“We can’t just give up _now,_ ” Sam cried, clearly distressed. It was becoming easier now to read the emotions of those around without glancing into what their minds were thinking. Yes, Castiel – and the name fit with surprising ease, now – felt that he knew the younger Winchester’s thoughts and actions thoroughly after spending a day with him. Cas really did feel he was enjoying the boy’s company too. And Sam in turn was so eager to know him, which for reasons Castiel didn’t yet fully understand, meant a great deal. His only aim seemed to be in holding Cas’ interest. It was bizarre, and fascinating, and oddly endearing, to have someone’s attention fixed so entirely on him, and not out of fear, or any ulterior motive. But it was… confusing too, to feel almost _beholden_ to the young creature.

Yes. Cas felt he now understood his young ‘master’s’ mind fairly well – it was so crammed full with eager good intent. But the brother’s mind was something different altogether. It was so clouded in indecision, doubt, unfocused rage and frustrated desires that Cas could barely work out who the man thought that he was. Before, at the bar, he had defended Cas and his brother, and even stood up to his employer, entirely unprompted, and yet now he seemed to be regretting the decision, even blaming it on his brother. Cas wondered idly as he watched them whether he should get involved. Sam had urged him to stay within the dog form Dean was familiar with already whilst in his company, but Cas was _itching_ after spending so long in the one form, and it seemed as though Sam was getting increasingly more upset.

“Family don’t end in blood,” Sam shouted, and Dean stopped moving, almost stopped thinking – though Cas did catch a glimpse of one image, of a blonde woman suddenly taking hold of a car wheel...

“We’re talking about a _dog_ here, Sam. Pretty sure that ain’t what Bobby meant.”

“Well, he’s not here, is he? And I say Cas is my family, even if he’s not yours,” Sam said, more quietly, as he looked over at Cas. “C’mon,” he said, “I’ll set your bed up upstairs next to mine.”

Cas watched Sam start walking up his stairs, but before following him, he cocked his head to one side and looked up at Dean, who still seemed disproportionally upset.

“What’re you looking at?” Dean asked gruffly. Reminding himself that Dean would not be expecting a reply, Cas walked on up the stairs.

“Who’s Bobby?” Cas asked immediately after regaining human form.

Sam seemed strangely guarded at the question. “He was a friend of our family. Kinda like an uncle. He was interested in space and aliens and stuff too.”

“Why do you say _was_?”

“He died when our parents did. Dean doesn’t like talking about it much.”

“Neither do you,” Cas pointed out.

Sam shook his head as he sat down on his bed. “Yeah, but it’s different for him. He was driving the car when they all crashed.” The boy looked at his feet. “They died. But Dean was ok. Least we still got each other.” He looked up at Cas. “And you, now. How long will you stay after they stop hunting you?”

Cas narrowed his eyes, considering. “They will have to stop eventually, I suppose. And then… I would like to see other parts of your planet. It seems interesting.”

Sam nodded. “Sure. You should go and see all the seven wonders and stuff and get to try _all_ the different foods. But…” Sam trailed off. “I did mean what I said back there though. You would always be welcome here, if you wanted.”

Cas almost smiled. “I imagine that could be difficult to explain to your brother.”

“Nah, we’d tell him. He’d come around eventually – he always does.”

Cas nodded and turned to inspect the rest of Sam’s room. He’d sleep there in dog form – it would be simplest, and avoid the complication of worrying about Dean walking in on them in the morning. Already he could tell that his human form, though perhaps the most adaptable, was about one of the least accommodating. They were strange creatures, humans, he thought again as he stroked a hand over the books on Sam’s shelf. One had a particularly bright binding and it made him stall.

Suddenly Sam was there beside him and removing the book from its position. “ _The Wizard of Oz_ ,” he named it. “It’s a good story – you wanna hear it?”

Glad to see the boy seemed cheered up again, and interested despite himself, Cas allowed himself a smile. “I think I enjoy your stories…”

*

“Can you see him?”

“He’s a dog again. Haven’t an idea what it thinks it’s doing, all slavish and flea-bitten,” Crowley said in disgust as he adjusted his lenses as though he hoped to see something more dramatic by the time he looked back. “This is _not_ what he was built for.”

Kevin sat up in his sleeping bag before rolling over a stone. Camping was certainly not what _he_ was built for, but his Mom had insisted they continue monitoring. She seemed to be more concerned for the kid sheltering the creature than she did her own son. “And what was that?”

The scientist shrugged, “Destruction, mostly. Just seemed a good way of sticking it to everyone who tried to tell me that such a fluid level of intelligent transmorph couldn’t be created and have any real substance.”

Kevin snorted, “Right. So he has no purpose. Other than being a danger to the humans my mother is so concerned for.”

“Yeah. Might wanna keep an eye on that there. Seems like she’s in danger of going native.”

“Seems like you’re in danger of talking too much about my mother again, Crowley.”

*


	5. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We meet aliens every day who have something to give us. They come in the form of people with different opinions.  
> William Shatner

Figuring the suspended school kid and his dog could forage for their own food, Dean only ventured out of his room once, to grab the landline phone, which allowed him to spend the morning answering some phone calls. They left him feeling a lot less broke, but about ten times more disgusted with himself. It didn’t usually bother him – money was money, and he could even get into enjoying himself with it some days – but after what Bela left saying, and in the new context of this being his _only_ job he felt a lot less practical and a load more seedy. But then his lazy morning of working-from-bed was cut rudely short when he had to get up and answer the door.

And wasn’t the man behind it a rude awakening all in himself.

“Heard you lost your job, Dean,” Henrikson said, clipboard still clasped loosely in both hands.

“Good morning to you too,” Dean grumbled, before remembering who it was he was speaking to. “And, uh, I actually _quit_ that job. The hours just weren’t working out with Sam-”

“Especially now since his school suspended him and he needs you during the day-”

“…yeah, that.”

“So who _is_ looking after Sam when you’re at this job you no longer have?”

Dean gulped. Maybe if he stood there looking like an idiot it would buy him some time to think of something smart to say. “Well, see-”

*

Sam sat down again after peaking around the door. Dean’s making things worse,” he groaned. “But he lost his job because of us, Cas – I think this is our fault.”

Cas watched the child bite down on his lip as he continued to listen.

“Now he’s saying they need someone to look after me. I wanna go out and say I don’t _need_ a babysitter, but I think that’d probably make things worse.”

Cas nodded his dog head sympathetically as he listened to the whirring of Dean’s thoughts, currently trapped in a loop of something that the woman they’d met yesterday had said to him. _Show up and play the helpful girlfriend, the helpful girlfriend…_

Cas tried to shake his head free of the man’s panic and listen to Sam: Sam who was in trouble and couldn’t do anything to prevent it. Though he seemed intelligent for his age, he had no power and was next to helpless against anything the world decided to throw at him. He had no control – and that seemed to Cas one of the worst fates he could imagine. It was just like Cas had no control over his own situation: he was being hunted, and so it would be dangerous to leave Sam’s side, now. Yes, he had almost no power to help himself. But perhaps he had the ability to help Sam and his rather strange brother…

*

“Well uh, babysitters – they’re like, _expensive_ , and-” But Dean didn’t have to figure out what else was wrong with babysitters – he lost the ability to speak the moment he heard the deep and unfamiliar voice behind him start to speak.

“Does the social worker need introduced to me, Dean?”

Dean risked a glance around, and gaped. He was standing next to a fucking _beautiful_ man with blue eyes that almost looked as though they glowed and a voice that screamed lazy dominated morning sex. The stranger smiled at Dean as though he’d known him all his life – _did_ Dean know him? Something about him seemed weirdly familiar, but surely Dean would remember a face like that – and then held out a hand to Henrickson.

“I’m sorry my boyfriend is so belated in his introductions. I’m Castiel, I’m the one usually looking after Sam while Dean’s at work.”

Who the fuck was this guy and _why_ was he introducing himself as the dog and what kind of sick joke _was_ this, Dean wondered as he did his best to plaster on a smile as Henrickson’s eyes flicked between him and his ‘boyfriend’.

“Oh really,” the social worker said, crossing his eyes around his clipboard.

“You got a problem with that?” Dean asked, finally finding his voice.

“Hardly. I’m more wondering why this isn’t something you mentioned before, Dean. Where were you yesterday?” he asked the guy currently posing as the dog. Or maybe _Sam_ knew this guy somehow and named the dog after him – but Sam wasn’t that good at keeping secrets... was he?

“Working. My office usually allows me to work from home, but yesterday they needed me.”

Henrickson nodded slowly, as though sure he was missing something but couldn’t yet work out what it was. “And is this ‘home’ for you then, Castiel?”

“Call me Cas,” the man told him with a smile at Dean, who was finding this on the bad side of eerie and wondered if he might still be dreaming.

“And yes. I’ve essentially been moving slowly out of my own place for a while now.” He smiled that creepy and fucking _ridiculously_ hot smile at Dean again. “Maybe we should have a moving in party for me, babe.” Which was almost word for word what Dean had jokingly just thought to himself.

Dean shuddered and gritted his teeth behind his smile. If any moment would be the wrong one to end up with a boner, then it was this one. He managed instead to laugh stiltedly. “Sure thing… babe. We’ll get on that.”

“Uh-huh,” Henrickson now looked almost as amused as he did disapproving. “So how do you and Sam get along?”

“Oh, very well,” the stranger gushed, as Sam suddenly appeared at his leg.

“Yeah!” Sam agreed enthusiastically, his eyes pleading when he looked up at Dean. Because apparently everyone was in on this creepy ploy except for Dean. “Yesterday Cas took off from work and we went into town for ice cream.”

Alright, and now it was terrifying hearing first-hand what a good liar Sam was turning into.

And _where the hell had he found this guy?_

“Oh yeah? So you’re enjoying living with both of them then, Sam?”

Sam shrugged, the picture of honest ambivalence. “Mostly. They can be annoying sometimes, but they fight a lot less than Mom and Dad used to.”

“Alright…” Henrickson trailed off and glared at them all in turn. Dean did his best to smile as though the arm the stranger had just slung around his waist was a normal occurrence.

“Alright,” the social worker said again, apparently satisfied for now, at least. “I’ll be back in a few days. And I’ll be expecting you to have found a job for yourself by then, Dean.”

“Already got a few ideas lined up,” Dean said immediately. _Anything_ to make the guy go away faster.

And then, mercifully, Henrickson left, and Dean was able to finally close the door. Without turning around after he finished with all the locks, feeling suddenly grateful for his Dad’s paranoia, he said quietly. “Alright, Sam. Very funny. Now where’s the dog?”

San burst into nervous laughter as Dean turned around. “There,” he said, and pointed at the dog next to him.

“Ok, so where’s my boyfriend then, huh? I mean I guess you saved our asses there, Sammy, but would it kill you to warn a guy-”

“I’m here,” said the dog. Who was a man again.

With the glowing eyes. And the sex hair.

“Uh…” Dean raised an arm, not sure if he wanted to point or to punch something but he knew he would need it to keep him from the world, and especially this hot guy who was staring at Dean like he was a mouse he was about to try stalking.

“Ok,” Dean said with a nervous grin. “Sammy, get away from the crazy guy. I think we’ve had enough of the whole American Werewolf in Lawrence routine now, alright?”

“He’s not crazy, Dean,” Sam said, standing closer to his friend who still wouldn’t quit with his staring and smiling routine. “And he’s not a werewolf either – he’s way cooler.” He took a deep breath. “He’s an alien, Dean.”

“Ok, this has all been _hilarious_ , but-”

The crazy guy turned into an alien. Like the actual vision of a little green man, with the whole egg shaped head alien that Dean had just been thinking of. And then the hot guy came back, who Sam looked up at in mild curiosity. “I thought you said aliens didn’t look like that.”

“I’ve never seen one like that till I saw it in your brother’s mind a moment ago.”

“Oh,” Sam said, like everything made sense now.

“What, you’re reading minds now?” Dean looked incredulously at them both before throwing up his hands and shaking his head. “Ok, too much. You’re getting outta the house now. Thanks so much for all that help we never asked for, but I’d appreciate it if you could stay away from my little brother now, alright?” Dean started to push the man out towards the back door, trying not to think about any of the far scarier forms he could be taking as he chose. To his relief, the man-alien-thing just kept on staring at him and smiling.

“You _like_ this form,” the alien-guy said with some relish. “You think it’s attractive.”

“Dee-ean,” Sam groaned.

“I do not-”

“And you’re still wondering where your dog has gone because you still don’t really believe us.” Those eyes, the eyes that had looked so damn creepy on the dog, were ones that Dean could now admit sat pretty well in this face. “I am the dog, I have been since I met your brother in the pet shelter and he offered me this plan of his protection until my creator ends his hunt for me.”

Dean stopped moving. “Your _creator_?”

“An alien, as you would call him. Yes, he made me, though not with any purpose to do ‘right’ as Sam tells me that your own did. His actions were in fact deemed so wrong by his government that they sentenced me to death for his crimes.”

‘Cas’ cocked his head to one side. “Does that seem ‘right’ to you, Dean?”

What really _didn’t_ seem right to Dean was that he really wanted to scream but didn’t want to seem like the token crazy guy in the house full of lunatics. And aliens. Apparently.

“Nah. I’m less of a death penalty guy and more of a get-the-fuck-outta-my-house-already kinda guy. It’s been _real nice_ meeting you, but I need to get out and find a job.”

“And who will look after Sam while you do that?”

“Believe me buddy, we were doing just fine before you came along.”

An eyebrow raised. “Oh really?”

Sam moved in between them. “C’mon guys, please stop with the pissing match already. Dean, Cas needs our help, and anyway, we need his now. You just told Mr Henrickson he’s the one looking after me. He can’t just disappear now or we’ll look even worse.”

Dean took a step back. “’Cas needs help,’” he mimicked. “Cas. So do you have a real name or is that it?”

“That’s it. I didn’t have one before your brother gave me one.”

“And I spelt it wrong,” Sam mumbled.

“What?”

Sam looked up like this was the worst secret coming out today as he heaved out a sigh. “I named him after the angel, right? Only the angel’s name is actually _Cassiel_ , with another ‘S’, not a _‘T’.”_

“I think it sounds more distinguished with a hard syllable in the middle,” Cas said kindly.

“Didn’t even have a _name,_ ” Dean muttered, but he couldn’t help feeling pity for the guy. Dog. Alien. Thing. Jeez, what kind of a fucked up Frankenstein existence had he been living?

“Wait,” Dean said slowly, his brain finally getting around to processing something. “You were in town together yesterday…” He narrowed his eyes. “ _You’re_ the guy Bela thinks I’m sleeping with?”

“I tried telling her different,” Sam insisted miserably.

“What, she wouldn’t listen to you that your new pal was actually from outer space and not someone who’d just jumped outta my bed?”

“Yeah,” Sam sighed, nodding. “I couldn’t tell her the _truth_ or anything…”

“Or me, apparently.”

“Well you would have freaked out and wouldn’t have believed me. You _are_ freaking out and not believing me.”

“That’s not the point. And I’m not believing you for a good reason. Because aliens don’t exist.”

“Would it be so horrible if Mom and Dad were right the whole time?”

Yes, Dean thought.

“My existence doesn’t make their deaths any less your mother’s fault, Dean,” Cas said quietly, looking right _into_ him with those _ridiculous_ eyes.

“Quit _doing_ that,” Dean snarled, as Sam looked up in confusion from one to the other.

“Dean, what-”

“Leave it, Sammy,” he warned, not letting his eyes leave the stranger’s face. He looked only a few years older than Dean, maybe, but then, he’d looked like a dog only a few minutes ago. “Your ‘friend’ here just has a sick sense of humour.”

The stranger looked genuinely hurt by that. “Oh,” he said eventually. “You hadn’t told him.”

“Told me _what_?”

“I said its _nothing,_ Sammy.” He raised a warning finger up to the stranger again. “And you,” he ordered, “stay the hell outta my fucking head.”

“You make that difficult for me when you scream out so many of your thoughts and feelings. It makes it very hard not to hear them.”

“Does it work when you’re far away from me?”

“I don’t imagine so.”

“Ok then, you’re keeping your distance from me from now on. But not so far that I can’t see you with my brother.” He huffed out a breath. “I’m not saying I believe you here, but maybe you’re right about one thing – we don’t have a lot of options. Today, at least.”

Cas nodded. “For today, then.”

*

It was going to be a long day, Sam thought as he and Cas sat on another bench waiting for Dean to tell them he’d got an interview someplace. They’d found some new clothes for Cas to wear before they left, mostly in the form of their Dad’s old trench coat, and Sam thought it probably made it look like they were cool private detectives on a stake out together. Or, made Cas look like one anyway. Sam still just looked like a kid.

He was starting to feel kinda bored, but what was definitely worse was that the alien beside him was really starting to _look_ bored, much as he still seemed to be enjoying people watching, and occasionally asking Sam questions, like about how cars worked. Sam was determined that Cas shouldn’t be bored. Then he might want to leave them sooner, even if it wasn’t safe for him to go yet. Which Sam knew would not only put Cas in danger, but would leave Sam feeling like… like all the colour had gone out of the world again – which he knew was selfish and ungrateful of him. Something he’d wanted more than almost anything in the world had gone and happened to him and all he could think about was keeping it that way for as long as possible.

…And Cas probably knew exactly what he was thinking. Man, that had to get annoying for him…

Sam was pretty sure he could see a slight smile at that.

“I will need to learn how to speak to people without alarming them with that,” Cas noted.

“What?”

“Being able to hear some of what they’re thinking about. You seem to handle it very well, but your brother… he doesn’t like it much,” Cas said uneasily. And Sam found it something of a relief to hear that in his voice after the cockiness he’d shown earlier with Dean. It was nice to know that he still cared.

“He didn’t mean it like that. He just doesn’t usually like stuff he can’t understand.”

Cas huffed. “I am easy enough to understand. He simply chooses not to do so. I suspect something doesn’t fit with his view of the world he chooses to ignore it altogether.”

Sam opened his mouth, then quickly closed it again. He badly wanted to ask – more than anything he wanted to _know_ , but it felt disrespectful to Dean somehow.

“You want to know what I saw about the car crash in your brother’s mind.”

Sam flinched, then nodded reluctantly. “It’s just… he doesn’t talk about it,” he said lamely. “We’ve never talked about it.”

Cas nodded. “I can’t tell you what happened, Sam. Only what I saw of your brother’s impressions, only what he remembers.”

“So what’s that?” Sam asked, eager now despite himself.

“He was driving the other three back from some kind of… convention, yes?”

“Yeah. There’d been all these crop circles and everyone turned up to… yeah.”

“Well your brother was frustrated with them all. It was very late and they’d all been drinking, though mostly your father, and your parents were fighting. And then your mother thought she saw something, what might have been a sighting.”

“…yeah?”

Cas bit down on his lip.

“Cas you can’t not tell me _now_.”

“She tried to turn the car off the road. Dean tried to stop her. And in doing so that was when they collided with another car.”

Sam was shocked to find that he was shaking slightly. The alien put a hand down uncertainly on Sam’s in what was probably meant to seem comforting.

“He never said…” Sam muttered, and looked at his feet. It wasn’t like they’d just died, all he Cas were doing was just _talking_ about it, and crying about it now would be _stupid._

“I’m not sure where this idea comes from that expressing emotion is somehow a weakness,” Cas mused. “It certainly seems to be something your brother lives by,” he noted as they watched Dean leave one shop and stalk along diligently into the next one.

“You… you like Dean though, right?”

Cas seemed to need to think about that for a moment. “I find no reason to _dislike_ him. And so far I’ve found him… interesting. Interesting and sometimes amusing.”

“Yeah, Dean can be funny sometimes. Especially before, when he didn’t need to worry so much about being in charge…”Sam trailed off, still thinking about what Cas had just said. _Interesting and amusing._ Huh.

Their Mom _had_ always said that Dean had a face that could make _anyone_ fall in love with him…

“So you… you _like_ Dean, then?”

Cas frowned in confusion. “I thought I’d just answered that question.”

“Well yeah. But do you, y’know, _like_ him?”

Cas narrowed his eyes at him. “Oh. You mean do I hold any feelings of a sexual or romantic nature towards him?”

“Well… yeah. That.”

The alien cocked his head to one side and stared into the shop Dean had just entered. Sam held his breath. “I’m not sure I know him well enough for that,” he said slowly, but for the first time Sam noticed a blush start spreading over his cheeks. “But, physically, he is very proportional.”

Sam nodded encouragingly. Proportional. He could work with that. After all, Sam might not be enough to stick around for, but Dean – Dean, who would flirt back with _anything_ …

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re thinking now, Sam.”

“I’m thinking,” Sam said as he started to smile slowly. “That if you want to practice a good way of using your mind reading, then flirting’s the _perfect_ place to start.”

*


	6. Job-Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don't believe that there are aliens. I believe there are really different people”. - Orson Scott Card

It was kinda better while also being a thousand times worse asking people he knew if they had any jobs going. Better because it meant there was less of the stilted formal introductions, but worse, because they probably knew about Rufus and/or Bela already and anyway, he probably went to high school with them.

Ruby was a perfect example of that. She’d been in his year at school, and her now-boss Meg had been a few years above them. According to Charlie they were sleeping together, but out of wishful thinking she had a tendency to see lesbians everywhere, so Dean wasn’t gonna go into their bar with any assumptions. But seeing them together he quickly saw Charlie’s point. The two blondes were certainly _close_ if nothing else.

“We don’t have any work going, Dean,” Ruby said immediately, folding her arms the moment he walked in.

He walked up to the bar with open arms and a wide grin. “C’mon, Ruby. That any way of talking to an old friend?”

“Old _friend_? If my Mom had it her way, I’d _still_ be grounded from high school after what you did.”

“I have _no_ idea what she’s talking about,” Dean asserted quickly, turning a hesitant smile towards Meg, the owner of _Hellfire_ by way of recent inheritance, who smiled back, too widely.

“Is this that house party I think you’re talking about…?” she asked as she clunked down of box of beers onto the bar. Then she pursed he lips together thoughtfully, and her eyes lit up with full on predatory intent. “ _Oh_ ,” she said, “you’re not Dean Winchester, are you?”

“Yes,” Ruby confirmed huffily, eyes still screaming at Dean to leave.

“C’mon now, if you’re gonna throw a house party-”

“My Mom was gonna set the dogs on you when she found you all up there!”

“This _is_ the story I thought it was,” Meg said with obvious glee. “There was some kinda gay orgy, lots of drugs involved…”

“Aw c’mon, it was a _threesome_ , with a _girl_ and a bit of _pot_ , alright?” Dean snapped, who felt like one way or another he’d never been remembered for anything else since high school.

“ _After_ I’d told you to leave already. In my _parents’ bedroom_.”

Dean tried to think of a smarter thing to say to that other than “we were eighteen”, and shrugging, but eventually settled for taking a deep breath in and turning back to Meg. “Sooo, any summer work going? I heard you were advertising. And you know I’m good. And keep this one on too and you got yourself some free entertainment.”

Meg gave the still fuming Ruby a sideways glance of amusement. “Well…”

Then before she could say anything, the door opened and suddenly they weren’t the only ones in the bar anymore.

“Cas,” Dean managed, recovering first. “You not,” he coughed, “Aren’t you waiting out there with Sammy? _”_

_“_ You gonna introduce me to your friend there, Dean?” Meg basically purred as she leaned her whole body across the bar. The alien – _no_ not an alien – walked closer to her with a smile and picked up her hand gently, and pressed it to his lips. “Mm. Boyfriend, actually,” he said with a wink at Dean.

Who was fuming. Or maybe just jealous.

Or yeah, maybe just mad.

“Yeah, ladies…” Dean coughed. “This is Cas.”

Ruby narrowed her eyes. “I thought you and Bela had just finally gone official there.”

“We have – had. But uh-”

“This came on suddenly for us,” Cas asserted as he put an arm around Dean. The action felt rough, but not altogether unpleasant. “I’ve only just moved here. But I’ve heard that this is a very fine drinking establishment.”

Meg raised her eyebrows and turned to look at Ruby. “Oh, you hear this one? ‘Fine drinking establishment’.” She daintily extended the hand he’d laid a kiss on and poked him in the chest. “I like you. Want a drink? On the house, obviously…”

“Uh…” he looked over at Dean, as though unsure of how to proceed from here onwards. “Yes,” he said slowly, though there was a hint of a question still in there.

“Oh no, Cas here ain’t a good afternoon drinker,” Dean told her. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what a drunk mindreading shapeshifter looked like, even if this was all some kinda joke Dean just hadn’t figured out the punchline to yet.

“Oh yeah?” Ruby put in, arms still firmly folded around herself. “Well last time I heard about your drinking, you were a barely functioning alcoholic. You sure you’re the best type to be manning a bar, Dean?”

“I’ve been _functioning_ just fine at Rufus’ for the last-”

“Except now you’re fired.”

“And now I’ve _quit._ ”

“ _Sure._ ”

*

 

Dean didn’t speak to him as they left the bar, only marched on down the street, still angry, at himself, at Ruby, at Meg, and especially at Castiel, who was left to trail behind him with Sam. “I don’t think it worked,” he confessed to the boy.

“Don’t worry,” Sam assured him, patting at his arm. “That was just phase one of the plan – making him jealous. It’s like the fast track way of getting Dean to notice you.”

“ _Notice_ me?”

“Yeah. Like see you in a different light, start thinking of you in _that_ way,” Sam said, nodding sagely. “It works every time in the movies, believe me.”

Cas nodded, feeling far more uncertain than Sam did. “Alright… What’s phase two?”

Sam thought for a moment, and a million images from what Cas assumed were various ‘movies’ flashed through his head. “You got any talents, Cas?”

“Other than the shifting and the mind-reading which you’ve advised me to limit around Dean?”

“Yeah. Like, I dunno, singing or something. Again, it’s all about what’s going to make him notice you, gonna make him interested. I think they call it peacocking. Because peacocks, the males have these amazing big feathers they bring out when they want to attract a mate-”

“Ah. So I’m to bring out my metaphorical tail feathers in order to impress your brother.”

“Exactly.”

“Without actually turning into a peacock.”

“Yeah. Keeping it metaphorical.”

Cas glanced behind him. Sure enough, there his creator was, with his companion sent from the council to moderate his actions. He wondered what they’d be making of his and Sam’s game.

*

“What’s your creature trying to do now, Crowley?” Kevin asked, glancing up from the milkshake he’d been nursing at the local café for the last twenty minutes. It was… different. Not unpleasant, certainly.

The scientist narrowed his eyes. “I think… I think it’s trying to better ingratiate itself with the humans.” He stopped to leer back at Kevin. “Rather like your old Mum, wouldn’t you say?”

He was cut off, painfully, by Kevin landing a punch into his gut.

“ _Anyway._ That makes some sort of sense,” Crowley continued, because he seemed to require someone to listen to his every thought. “But this _chasing_ after the older human boy… it’s almost as though…” He huffed and looked through his goggles again. “But that doesn’t make any _sense_.”

“What?”

“I think he’s trying to seem more… _attractive._ ”

*

“I told you already, Dean, Frank doesn’t have any openings,” Charlie hissed at her friend as soon as she noticed him walk into the otherwise empty shop.

“Hello to you too,” he grumbled. “Look, I’m at the end of my damn tether here, Char. Couldn’t you just-”

“Then go and talk to Rufus again! Whatever it was that went wrong I’m sure he’d-”

“No,” Dean said flatly. “I’m not doing that. C’mon I could take on some part-time shifts until you leave for college again – he’s gonna need _someone_ around to run the shop for him then…”

Charlie sighed. “Dean, you can barely tell an iPhone from a Gameboy, and god help me if I ever try contacting you using facebook. You really want a job in a _computer repair_ place?”

To his credit, he didn’t _quite_ wither under her gaze. “I’m a fast learner. And I can fix an engine – can’t be that different, right?”

“Actually-”

“And I can work a till at least. Keep the customers happy while you nerds work out how to make their machines happy.”

Charlie sighed at him again. “Look, I’ll ask him. But Dean, y’gotta be honest with me man, how bad is it? My Mom’d help you out, you know that.”

“I don’t wanna go taking any money we can’t pay back. Anyway,” he continued firmly. “Things ain’t all that bad. Still got my sidejob running ok. And I’ve got someone around to look out for Sam which is keeping the social worker off my back for the moment.”

“Oh yeah, who?” She didn’t want to say it aloud, but with the band all out of the state, Dean didn’t exactly have many close friends around in town, and the ones he did have were also busy with college or work or their own families. There weren’t always a load of time anyone had in there to look after a lonely nine year old, Charlie thought with some guilt. Hell, she loved Sam to bits but she didn’t exactly have any more time on her hands than Dean did. But hey, it wasn’t like she didn’t _try._

She was there giving parenting tips more frequently than anyone else in Dean’s life, and whenever he’d taken off for a night at Bela’s, she’d been the one there back in the house sitting up with Sam watching _Stargate_ reruns or something. And admittedly, having an awesome time, every time. The kid had good taste.

“What can I do for you kid,” Frank asked as he came up behind her, wearing a cheerful smile, but when Charlie looked at his eyes she could tell he was definitely having a little internal scream about college kids and their overpriced broken laptops.

He could be a good guy, Frank. Just not necessarily with _people._

Dean beamed at him. “I’m actually not in with a computer problem, sir, I’m here to help solve ‘em.”

Oh no, Charlie thought, a sinking feeling in her chest. Frank hated cheesiness. And cheerfulness.

People, mostly.

“Oh yeah?” Frank sat down and narrowed his eyes, looking up at Charlie. “You know this guy?”

Charlie fought down a sigh, before brightening up. “Frank, this is Dean. He’s looking for work, and let me tell you, he’s been hacking into government sites almost as long as I have,” she lied gamely, giving Dean a big _you owe me_ glare. Which he would – she sensed she’d be stuck doing double the work for a long time if Dean got anywhere near this job. “He can fix anything,” she continued, while finishing in her head, _but mostly if that anything has four wheels and goes ‘vroom’._

“Really?” Frank asked, tone not changing even slightly as he looked Dean up and down. He didn’t look impressed, but then he hadn’t looked terribly impressed with Charlie until she’d proven that she was as good with his machines as he was, if not better. Scratch that, he still wasn’t impressed. And he didn’t pay her enough.

Hard-to-please chauvinist pig.

“Oh, sure,” Dean agreed easily. “Take me on sir, just whatever extra hours you got going. I promise you ain’t gonna be disappointed.”

“Hmm,” Frank started to say, and then the door opened.

Something about the way the man walked in with that strange, disarming smile made Charlie feel certain that this was not someone coming in to ask how to switch his old PC on.

“Hello,” Frank said to him.

Dean whipped his head around, hissing, “Cas?”

“Oh, you two know each other?”

“Apparently everyone knows everyone today,” Frank grumbled, clearly fast losing interest.

“Cas here was probably just looking for me,” Dean explained, looking far too irritated with this guy for him to be anything less than a close friend. Except that Dean really didn’t have any of those that Charlie didn’t know already – or at least know _of_. And she would remember Dean talking about this one, she thought as she gave the stranger an appreciative once over. Because he was hot, and Dean definitely would have mentioned that, and also because there was something…. Odd about the guy. Something about those eyes. It almost looked as though they were glowing.

“So… Cas?”

He nodded at her briefly, almost like he’d forgotten she was there. “Castiel,” he told her, and then those incredible eyes were caught by something behind her and lit up even more.

“Oh,” he said. “It’s broken.”

“Well, yeah, genius-” Frank stated as Cas walked around the counter and behind him. “Hey!”

It was almost difficult to watch. One moment he seemed to be analysing the disconnected hard drive. And then he just… started to fix it.

“Cas,” Dean said warningly.

“I don’t know what you think you’re trying to-” Frank started, but Charlie shushed him, and to his credit he actually stopped. Because the strange beautiful man had almost finished already. There was another click, and then the man stepped back from it. It looked… fine. No one had told him what the problem was, or handed him any tools. He’d just… done it.”

“Huh,” Charlie breathed.

“Do _you_ need a job?” Frank asked him, breaking the silence that had quickly ensued.

*

Dean seemed to be yelling at Cas when they left Charlie’s workplace. Maybe the peacock plan hadn’t gone down so well after all, Sam thought, a sinking feeling in his chest.

But arguing. Couples did that all the time in movies – and in real life, from all the ones Sam had ever seen – so it couldn’t be all bad, right?

“…I don’t know what fucking game you’re playing at here, hell, I don’t even know what you fucking _are_ , but you’re staying outside next time. _No more surprises._ ”

And then Dean stormed off, huffing to Sam about his “weird-ass alien screwing everything up” as he passed.

“Does it usually work that way for the peacocks?”

“I don’t _think_ so. But its ok, you still got loadsa chances…” Cas still looked glum and thoughtful. “What happened anyway?”

“A machine was broken,” Cas told him, shrugging. “So I fixed it quicker than the proprietor expected me to. I hoped that would count as ‘showing off’.”

“Cas you don’t actually have to put those air quotes up every time.”

“Really? But I saw it like that in your head…”

“Yeah it’s kind of one of those inflection things, I think.”

The shop door opened again as they were speaking and Charlie came dashing out, Sam’s face instantly lighting up at the sight of her. “Hey Charlie!”

“Heya, squirt. I took an early lunch break. Where’s your brother?”

Sam shrugged and pointed up the road. “He went that way. I think he’s still job-hunting.”

“Ok. No way I’m running on my break-time.” She looked up at Cas. “So who by all the Valar are you supposed to be? I feel like after all that computer love and the Dean flustering we’re gonna have to be best friends now, whoever you are. Can I hug you? Is that, like, appropriate? How do you know these losers anyway?”

“Hey!”

“Uh…” Cas looked down at Sam for guidance. Sam was enjoying that. No one ever wanted him to help them decide things. People decided things for him for his own good and he was always just supposed to go along with that.

Sam made this decision quickly. Because this, after all, was _Charlie_. And nobody left in the whole world was cooler than Charlie.

“He’s a shapeshifter from outer space that an alien scientist made. Now he’s on the run and we’re trying to keep him safe because other aliens are after him now.”

Sam watched Charlie’s face wrestle between irritation and amusement. In the end she grinned, and did so genuinely. “Hey, nice one. Can I be like the rebel bounty hunter come to bring him to justice?”

Cas looked deeply confused. “I don’t think they’re trying to bring me anywhere, they’re just trying to kill me.”

“Charlie, I’m being serious here. I’m not lying.”

“Sam, I didn’t mean-”

Sam looked up at Cas. “Can you show her? Please? She’s safe, I promise, and she might be able to help.”

Cas nodded once and led them into the alley conveniently behind them. “I am beginning to understand how difficult it must be for all of you not being able to see the others’ thoughts around you,” he said with a shake of his head and became a raven.

Charlie freaked out less than Dean had, but she still freaked out. The moment there were feathers flapping in front of her face she grabbed Sam and pulled him back against the wall with her, shouting, “ _Fuck_ me into next week, where’d he go?”

“Its fine, Charlie,” Sam reassured her, patting her arm. “Cas is friendly, really he is.”

“And that’s how he fixed that computer so damn quick,” she breathed as he became a man again. “I’m still looking for the trick, here,” she admitted. “But _wow._ And you can be _anything_ , _anyone_?”

Then the Black Widow from the movies was standing in front of her, saying “Yes,” before going back to being the man Sam had come to think of as Cas himself.

Charlie brought up a hand to fan herself down. “Ok, so you weren’t kidding about the mindreading part either. Wow.”

She took a deep breath in and leaned against the wall. “So uh, how did Dean take all this?”

Sam grinned. “What do _you_ think?”

“I just can’t believe you told him.”

“We kinda had to. We’re pretending Cas is his boyfriend who looks after me.”

“So, Bela…”

“Yeah, that was kinda our fault,” Sam said, looking at his feet.

Charlie nodded, still looking at Cas. “Oh, I can see where that mighta come from. Are you guys the reason behind the job loss too?”

Sam spoke before Cas had a chance to. “No, the people hunting Cas are the ones who got Dean fired. They’re working with my principal, but I don’t know if she knows.”

“Oh, her,” Cas said dismissively. “She’s an alien too.”

“Nice Ms Tran? The Hell? Is anyone else an alien? Is there some kinda invasion going on?”

“No one else I’ve met yet. And no invasion, just observation.”

“How’d she get so normal?”

“Camouflage software. I’m not all that certain how it works, but I could probably manage to build some if I had the right materials at hand.”

“Yeah, screw Dean, you need to come work for us.”

“Not yet,” Sam put in. “We need Dean to start liking him better first and maybe falling in love with him.”

Charlie’s eyes brightened. “Oh yeah?” She grinned and let out a short breathy laugh. “This is too good. Aliens and the sacred trope of the fake boyfriends all in the one day.” She shook her head, muttering, “How come Dean always gets all the fun?” She breathed out then, as though trying to steady herself. “Ok, fellas. Frank won’t let me have long for lunch but we’re gonna have a sit down and you’re gonna talk to me about space and I’m gonna tell you all you need to know about winning the heart of one Dean Winchester.”

“I don’t think that possessing his heart is necessary. I imagine that his body requires that to function correctly-”

“Metaphor, Drax.”

“Oh, I see.” Cas’ face fell a little. “Everyone lies so much. It’s exhausting.”

*

Dean had one last idea in terms of job-hunting, or, in his case, job- _begging_. He knew one other person who ran their own business, not that the business itself would have been his first choice of career-path. But then, neither was phone sex, Dean reminded himself as he walked up the wooden steps to Missouri Mosely’s door.

“Yes? Have you got an appointment?”

“Not exactly.”

The door opened.

“Dean, honey, you’d make a godawful psychic and you know it.”

“You could at least let me come in first.” She sighed and rolled her large dark eyes at him, then turned back into the house, wordlessly beckoning him to follow her.

As a kid, she’d always terrified him, this friend of his Mom’s who’s always seemed to know what he was thinking before he’d done anything, and was quite happy to get him pre-eminently in trouble for it.

“You’ve been avoiding me since the funeral,” she said stiffly.

“What? No, I’ve been busy,” Dean protested as he took a seat on her old couch. She sniffed meaningfully and took a seat across from him.

“You know there ain’t no point in lying to me, boy. Coffee?”

“Nah, I’m good.”

Her eyes softened. “You damn Winchesters are always the same. All stubborn as jackasses. I could have helped with Sam, y’know.”

“I know.” And he had, but he’d avoided thinking about it, just like he’d been… alright avoiding her too.

“But you didn’t want me talking about what really happened that night.”

Dean put his head up sharply. “Then you know?”

“I know you’ve not said it out loud yet ‘cause it hurts too bad to even think on. I know that you looked mad as I’ve ever seen you when you first looked down at that closed casket they buried your mother in. And I know you ain’t never been a careless driver, whatever else you’ve been.” She looked him square in the eye and Dean had never wanted to be somewhere else so badly in his life. “You gotta stop blaming yourself. You gotta stop lying to yourself. And if you can, you need to stop blaming her. You know this would never have been what she wanted.”

Dean coughed and looked down at the carpet. “That’s uh. Easier said.”

“But you’d be better for it. And _Sam_ would be better for it. Now, who _is_ looking after that boy?”

That of course was the million dollar question, Dean thought with a smile ago, hoping fervently again that Sam really was alright alone with that guy. That thing.

“Ellen was saying he’s been suspended.”

“A… friend’s looking after him.”

She squinted at him. “Bela, really? No, wait.” Her eyes widened. “A man.” She smiled. “Oh, you’ve never had a boyfriend before, have you, Dean?”

“S’ok. Neither’s he,” Dean told her with a quick grin. “Don’t get too attached to the idea though. He’ll be leaving town again soon. Meanwhile I really need a job.”

“Well then go back to Rufus. He’ll pretend he’s not but you know he’ll be worrying about you.”

“Not happening. _Please,_ Missouri, y’gotta have something for me to do around here.”

She sighed again, and nobody ever sighed quite like Ms Mosely. She sighed like the whole world was disappointed in you and everyone else had just asked her to speak for everyone.

“I need someone to mow my lawn. I’d pay either you or Sam to do that for me once a week.”

Dean nodded. “Fine, I can send Sam over for that – but what about me? I can bullshit like nobody else, I’d be great at this. You hired Pam.”

“Pamela has a genuine _gift._ You, as you say, are just a gifted liar, boy. And please don’t insult me by trying to tell me that’s the same thing.”

“Right. I wasn’t gonna, but I’m just saying, I think I could do a pretty good job of faking it.”

“Well I don’t,” she said flatly. “But I mean it about the lawn. And you bring that boyfriend around. I want to meet him, even if he isn’t staying long.”

Dean nodded, glumly. “Right. Boyfriend.”

“At least you have that going for you. And if he’s someone you trust with Sam then he must be quite the winner.”

Dean coughed. Well, he _had_ saved them from the social worker. And as well as being crazy hot, in his _normal_ form anyway, he was kinda funny too, even if Dean wasn’t sure what to make of him yet and he was still feeling pretty pissed off with him…

“Uh, yeah. I guess.”


	7. Domesticity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.” - Stephen Hawking

After all the humans Cas had been exposed to so far he’d found Charlie’s company… refreshing. Perhaps it was that layer of guilt which so constantly purveyed the minds of the Winchesters over not doing what was ‘right’ which Charlie lacked to the same degree that he liked so much. Yes, he liked her. Not perhaps in the same manner he admired Dean, but she’d been very insistent that that was different. Cas wanted to understand that better. He had barely even spoken to Dean. It didn’t make much sense at all that he had started to occupy so much of Cas’ thoughts.

Dean meanwhile didn’t seem interested in speaking to him anymore. He’d been in the shower since Sam and Cas had got back, and the house seemed quiet. Sam had tried to get Cas interested in his cleansing of his father’s equipment, but Cas couldn’t help finding the subject dull, the science rudimentary, and the ritual one that Sam was more used to carrying out in private. And, well. Cas didn’t actually find looking at the universe _dull_ – that was him falling prey to that very human habit of lying, which seemed as though it could only have a detrimental effect when turned on oneself. No, looking out through Sam’s telescopes made him nervous. The universe was so very large, and it surely could not be the only one. And Cas knew that in the spectrum of the life he’d born witness to thus far he would fit very high on the scale of those being which were powerful, that were in some way extraordinary… but in comparison to all that was out there he was nothing.

He thought that Sam must be very brave to stare out every night through them.

Instead, Cas was so far spending this evening sitting watching the television alone, flicking through the channels, learning about all of these possibilities for forms, until he found something bright, that looked as though someone had drawn the frames by hand, which surprised him by tugging smiles from him, again and again. Was he _supposed_ to find the relentless torture these anthropomorphic animals were continuously subjected to amusing? He was still wondering about that when the cartoon finished, and the phone in the kitchen started ringing.

Communications devices requiring wires, Cas remembered from Sam’s limited thoughts on them. But they were meant to be answered, that’s what Cas had gotten the impression that ringing phones were _for_ …

He didn’t want to get things wrong, but he also wanted to show to Dean that this ‘boyfriend’ role he’d been assigned was one he’d be able to accomplish. And assumedly picking up the phone was a task which he might be faced with regularly if he remained for very long as Sam’s live-in guardian.

So Cas went and picked up the phone, finding that no other button pressing or code punching was necessary to then be speaking to the caller.

“Hello?”

*

Dean took his time in the shower. Hell, he _deserved_ a long shower after the day he’d been put through. No one seemed to have work for him after he’d tramped his way all round town, so if he spent the extra time in there trying to ease off some extra tension then who could blame him?

Alright, moralists might blame him if they found out that it was the thought of the man who was still technically his dog that had brought him to the edge as he’d jerked himself off there, but they didn’t need to know about that. And it wasn’t Dean’s fault that the alien-guy had picked out a form that had that crazy deep baritone voice –

“-Uh, if you would like to imagine so then, then yes. Yes, am.”

…A voice that currently sounded like it was speaking to someone. But Sam was upstairs, he’d just heard him. So who the hell was Cas talking to down there? Was he talking to all his conmen buddies, or planning an alien invasion of Kansas?

Dean did not to have time to play Will Smith and run around –

“No,” he heard Cas say with some force. “I imagine that that would be painful for me. I think fingers, or some kind of purpose-made implement would be necessary to use first before you tried that, if you are actually as well-endowed as you claim.”

Dean froze. He wasn’t – he _couldn’t_ be… Oh, he was.

So this was what dirty talk from an alien abomination sounded like…

Of all the things his Mom had ever dreamed of finding out about other life forms, Dean was pretty sure this hadn’t been one of the things she’d wanted to know.

And then the second realisation hit: this guy was gonna end up getting him fired from his _second_ job too. Could he even _get_ fired? Dean wondered as he dashed madly down the stairs, fingers clinging tightly to the towel wrapped around his waist, and ran into the kitchen, where Mr Sex Hair was still sitting calmly at the breakfast bar, phone to his ear. He smiled at Dean in acknowledgement when he saw him rush in, but made no sign that he was in any way ashamed of his actions. Then he spoke again, as Dean slowly shut the kitchen door. Whatever happened next Dean was pretty sure he didn’t want his kid brother to have to hear it.

“Yes. Now, see that would be much more acceptable.  I imagine that I would like that.”

Dean gaped, he couldn’t help it. The guy was going along with the phone sex, sounding _incredible_ as he did so… but he was doing it all _wrong_. How did anyone make sex sound so clinical and awful but sounding so commanding and so fucking hot at the same time?

And none of that was something Dean’s usual customers came calling for. But whoever it was on the other end, they seemed to be starting to play along to the tune the alien was putting out there, or at the very least, they were still on the phone. So at the loss of knowing what else to do, Dean stayed where he was. And started to feel very, very, disturbingly turned on.

“Yes. Yes but slower. And deeper, you’ll have to go deeper or you won’t make me want it enough. Don’t you want to make me want it?”

And then the bastard caught Dean’s eye and actually started _grinning_ , very slowly, and entirely wickedly. It made him look a lot less human and a lot more predatory and strange, but somehow not any less attractive.

This was the guy who’d cost him a relationship, a job, and probably another two interviews, Dean reminded his dick fiercely. But it seemed to be a lot more interested in what Cas was saying.

“More. I’ll need at least another finger if you’re hoping to fill me up,” he said, giving Dean a wink, so quickly that Dean wondered whether he’d just imagined it. And then he worked out why those last words had made almost made him shudder appreciatively, made him start feeling so fucking hard – it was because there was no way that Cas had known that phrase before. He’d just gone and pulled it right out of Dean’s head.

Which meant that he knew – and _of course_ he did – _exactly_ how turned on Dean was feeling and he was carrying on anyway – oh, and now Cas was touching himself. Great. But the alien was doing it in such an unbearable way that it was almost driving Dean to… well, to do something crazy. Because all Cas was doing, almost unthinkingly, was stroking a finger down his crotch and up again, still over the protection of his jeans. It barely even looked like he was touching himself at all, at least not on purpose, except for the fact that he was clearly rock hard under there, as hard as Dean was. Dean who was trying desperately to think of what he should be doing that wasn’t just letting his own hand grab for his own dick. Because this was all just getting too much.

But it was still just too fucking _weird._

And clearly the alien had heard that though, because now he was raising an eyebrow, almost in challenge as he continued to stroke himself. But though those stroke, those pets he was giving himself were growing more firm, more bold, more certain, they were still _wrong_ and it was getting damn frustrating to keep watching – and far more distracting than the deep tone of his voice still talking to whoever was on the other end of the phone.

Again, it seemed like Cas had heard Dean’s criticisms, because while he continued to stare at Dean, like he was waiting for his approval, he was slowly starting to unbutton his jeans and slip a hand down them. His hand was just at the head of it, where Dean wanted it, but he still felt hyper-aware that Cas was going to need _more_ and he was still doing it _wrong_ and Dean couldn’t tell him that and he couldn’t move and he didn’t know how to stop whatever weirdness was going on and he was getting less sure that he wanted to and –

And Dean snapped.

He didn’t let himself move quickly, but he did allow himself to move, and he moved towards Cas, kneeling down in front of him and not bothering to notice whether he still had a towel covering himself, and maintaining that eye contact. Because at this point, Dean thought as he started to pull down the man’s jeans with trembling fingers, that something awful would happen if he did. If he broke away from staring into those eyes that almost seemed to glow that his anchor would be lost, and the spell broken.

“Yes. Exactly like that. I can – I can feel you in me now,” Cas murmured as Dean pulled his underwear down to join the jeans at his ankles, and brought his tongue out to slide slowly over Cas’ cock, which _jumped_ slightly at Dean’s first touch to it. So Dean decided to stretch things out a little, and it was with agonising slowness that he dragged his tongue up to the head, and flicked it around, feeling oddly like a cat as he started lapping at the wetness growing there already. Then Cas gave a _moan_ that spent spikes of desire and something like pride shooting right through Dean. He wondered what it was doing to the guy still on the phone, who’d so far been entertained by someone who sounded more like a robot than a human…

More importantly, what was all this doing to him? Was this all part of some creepy alien love spell? Dean mused as splayed his hands out over Cas’ hips and took him in, right to the back of his throat. And creepy alien spell? Where had _that_ thought come from? And hour ago he was still trying to figure out what the crazy guy was because he sure as hell couldn’t have come from space.

“Yes. Keep doing that. But… but faster. More,” he seemed to stare right down into Dean’s soul as he spoke and Dean wondered if that was one more power he had. “Please,”

With that one word and the broken intensity put behind it, Dean felt as though he could have come right then, completely untouched. So he distracted himself instead, and started using his hands to help keep the rhythm he’d started, making it faster, as commanded – because he _knew_ how much that had been meant for him – and eventually Dean took his mouth away, locking eyes with Cas again, and licking his lips as he bent down, Dean brought his tongue lower, letting it tease its way over Cas’ hole, which shuddered away from him as he felt the alien arch his entire back and give another low groan.

“Don’t stop,” he keened over the phone, but breathless as it was, this was an order, and it made Dean grin as he let his tongue lick and dig inside… something about that commanding tone… Bela had always teased him over that, about what a ‘submissive’ he always ended up in bed. Dean wouldn’t go that far. But _fuck_ if it wasn’t all kinds of hot getting with someone who knew what they wanted and told Dean how to bring them there.

Cas was gripping on tightly to the kitchen side now for balance, as Dean kept one hand behind him, letting the other continue the increasingly quick movements over the Cas’ cock allowing his mouth to continue attending to his ass. And then after a few minutes of that, of feeling Cas shuddering above him, he switched, and his mouth closed over Cas’ dick, freeing his fingers to thrum over his hole –

Cas came with a loud gasp and one hand still caging the phone. Dean hoped, vaguely, that the guy on the other end was getting a good time too, but he couldn’t at this moment, as he held Cas’ shaking thighs through the aftershock of his climax, bring himself to care. He hadn’t touched himself at all, but he felt then like he’d been right there with Cas the whole time.

In all it was one of the weirdest, hottest, most fucked up situations he’d ever gotten himself into in his life. Seriously – what was his life? Dean found himself wondering as he swallowed down the last of Cas’ cum down his throat and pulled his mouth away.

“Alright. Alright that… that’s good. And yes I did. Goodbye,” Cas said hoarsely as he hung up. Then, shaking slightly, he pulled his pants back up.

“Thank you,” he said eventually, for the first time not looking at Dean. Dean felt like there were a million things that he wanted to say back, things that sounded angry and accusatory, things that would sound funny, things that would beg or demand for what he’d just done be reciprocated, things that would sound dangerously close to something out of a god-awful chick-flick… but because he was sure that Cas knew exactly what all of those would sound like from him, all he said was, “don’t mention it,” and got back to his feet and walked out of the room before he could turn back.

When he got out of the kitchen, he saw his brother hovering at the top of the stair. Shit.

“Are you guys alright? I thought I heard… yelling.”

Dean glared at him, before coughing, ashamed. Though it might be Sam’s fault they had a hot creepy alien around in the first place, it definitely couldn’t be his fault that Dean had just, unasked, decided to get him off.

“Just showing Cas the kitchen.”

“…ok?”

*

Dean and Cas had been seeming weird around each other all night, Sam had been noticing. And he didn’t think it could all be about the jobs thing. Dean didn’t seem exactly angry, just… confused. And Cas meanwhile seemed skittish and evasive and kinda vague, even with Sam.

So it got later and Sam took things into his own hands and made them sit down with him and watch a movie. Which was exactly the sort of ‘date-making’ Charlie had advised.

Cas wanted to know if they had any cartoons. Dean hadn’t sat down easily with them, but eventually he came down, clutching his laptop to keep on looking for jobs and sitting on the old chair instead of the couch with him. He scathingly kept on suggesting things like _ET_ and _Star Wars_ and _Alien_.  But Cas hadn’t looked too impressed by those suggestions once Sam had explained the recurring theme behind them. In fact he’d looked almost hurt, and wrinkled his nose at Dean, who turned his attention back to the popcorn they’d made up.

So Sam had sought a compromise. “How about that book we read last night, Cas? You liked _the Wizard of Oz_ , right?”

Dean groaned. “Sammy, please. I am ready to sit through all kinds of crap, but that’s just – I mean -”

“Cas liked it,” Sam said stubbornly, and folded his arms stubbornly, looking to his friend for confirmation. The alien nodded, slowly, like he wasn’t certain what he was agreeing to. “It all sounded very unlikely, but it was interesting,” he said.

And Dean, magically, didn’t voice any more complaints after that, though he did grumble something inaudible as Dorothy started singing.

“Is it customary for people to start breaking into song when they’re alone?” Cas asked then. He had more questions as the movie went on, such as why the actress playing Dorothy seemed so much older than the part, about the shift into technicolour, and the tin man very clearly not being made out of tin, about why the good witch couldn’t just have told Dorothy what the shoes were able to do at the beginning… Sam tried answering them all as well as he could, while Dean snorted derisively into his search engine, which he was clearly paying only the most minimal attention to. But by the time Dorothy and her friends reached the Emerald City both Dean and Cas were sleeping.

Cas hadn’t slept as a human before, Sam thought fondly, as he listened to the sounds of his soft snores over the screeching of the flying monkeys. And as for Dean, Sam hadn’t seen him sleep in a long time. He assumed that Dean did sleep at some point, but most days it felt like Cas was too stressed for that. But today, today he slept, and he didn’t seem to mind that they could see him doing it.

Of course the best part of Dean being asleep was that he wasn’t conscious to laugh at Sam’s reactions to the film. The witch still scared him a little, and although Sam wouldn’t have admitted that to anyone, he did let himself inch a little closer to Cas when she appeared on screen.

“There’s no place like home,” Sam murmured along with Dorothy, and for the first time since his own world had felt like it faded from colour, he felt like he believed it. He didn’t know what had happened between Dean and Cas in the kitchen earlier, but _something_ must have. Because it finally felt like their little screwed up family might be starting to knit itself together.

*

“It was as though one moment I was living one life – my old life – and I was being examined in my cage, and then suddenly I was back on the couch with you,” Cas explained to Sam, shuddering slightly at the memory. To his surprise, his young friend only smiled at his disturbing news.

“It was a dream, Cas,” he explained. “You were just dreaming.”

“Oh,” he said, understanding as he did so a little from Sam’s mind of what that meant. Which assumedly meant that his earlier ‘dream’ about reliving his moments in the kitchen with Dean had also not been real. Which was disappointing, Cas thought, and lay back on the couch again.

All day, he and Sam had not moved from that couch, watching screeds and screeds of ‘the news’. Cas didn’t mind, really, although he had started to feel that itch he felt when he hadn’t changed in a while. Dean still hadn’t found a job, and that itched too, because he could hear it bothering him. But bothering Dean more was what he had done for Cas in the kitchen the day before. Cas wasn’t all that certain yet as to why, though he had a hazy idea it might have something to with Sam’s definition of what was ‘right’, although that still confused Cas as well.

He had enjoyed himself, and he could tell that Dean had too. At the same time, he’d managed to succeed in finishing what Dean considered a job, which Cas understood well that he needed more of. And yet Dean hadn’t met his eyes since. Humans, Cas decided again, were bizarre. He suspected that with Dean he may actually have a problem with letting himself have any… fun. He would like to sort that, Cas thought, but he still wasn’t all that sure whether it was something that Dean even wanted. If Cas ever found out, he decided, then he would do his best to make it happen.

*

Charlie called just after dinner and by then Dean was welcoming any distraction. _Anything_ to keep his mind off emailing his CV into every damn place out there – hell, even a strip club, which, since Dean was fairly sure he could barely move one foot in front of the other, was completely ridiculous. And the alien – or whatever he was – sitting in the next room wasn’t helping. Dean almost felt like Cas thought he was letting him down somehow, but not rolling with whatever other fake boyfriend things he felt they should be doing.

But Cas was a problem on two counts. One was the sex thing. Or, rather, the lack of a sex thing, but the sex that Dean badly wanted to be having, and not in a crazy rebound way. Only he felt that even wanting it that much was just proving everyone right who’d ever said he acted like a slut – Bela, for a start. After all, he’d barely known the guy three days, and for one of those he’d spent the whole time thinking Cas was a dog. But he wanted it anyway and that was _weird_ and a _bad idea_ because Cas’d probably be leaving soon anyway, and anyway, Dean had never done the whole ‘gay couple’ thing. Sure, it felt like the whole town knew that he was bi now, but Dean had felt almost uncomfortable enough with a girlfriend. It was bound to be worse with a guy. How would they act around each other? Would they have discussions about who was gonna top every night? Would people start stopping them on the street to tell them how cute they looked together or to yell something that would get Dean, and probably Sam too, into more fights than they were already currently ending up in…?

Not that Cas exactly seemed the settling down type. But then, hell, neither was Dean. He was only twenty-one fucking years old and he only felt older because he literally had no life. But if Cas got serious then he’d just have to keep living with them, and what would that even look like?

But the sex/relationship issue was a small one next to the cataclysmic one of the alien thing.

Did alien experiments have weird-ass STD’s built in? Would Cas even know?

Was this some weird kind of bestiality?

And if his parents had been right the whole time, if Dean had been carrying all those bags of resentment around with him the whole fucking time?

 _My existence does not make their deaths any less your mother’s fault,_ he heard Cas say in his head several times that day. And Dean wondered.

Charlie’s voice cut abruptly into his thoughts. “So when were you gonna tell me about the alien boyfriend?”

Dean leaned forwards again in his chair. He was sitting in his Dad’s old study and he’d always _hated_ this chair so he never sat in it correctly on principal. “Wait, you _know_?”

“He and Sam told me when you were off moping yesterday. Nice catch.”

“Not exactly a catch. More a close encounter gone wrong.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know about the whole fake relationship thing. But he should be.”

“Yeah – _no_. Wait, _this_ is the part you’re focusing on? Not the whole sci-fi deal?”

“No need, quizzed him on that already and I’ll bet he knows a fair bit more than you since I’m guessing you’re still half-stuck in denial land. But it does sound like you need to be careful, Dean. The people after him sound like they could be scary. Like, probably on a level with the Daleks but not so simplistic. And Ms Tran in it too – _that’s_ weird.”

“Wait – I didn’t know that… oh, wait.”

“Yeah you did. Anyway, you gotta put the scary target on our backs too and bring him out with you tonight.”

Dean smiled grimly and smacked a hand over his forehead. “I’m not going anywhere tonight.”

“Wanna bet? The band’s back in town. Big surprise and etcetera, etcetera. Meet us at Benny’s parents’ place. They’re outta to-own…”

“Yeah, we’re too old for this shit, Charlie.”

“Uh, sorry pops, but last time I checked we were all barely legal to drink.”

“Well _I’m_ too old for this shit,” Dean snapped. “I got the social worker sniffing around, I got a job to find and I’ve got a ‘boyfriend’ who ain’t exactly fit for company. And I’d leave him with Sam only apparently they might go getting attacked while I’m gone.”

“Call Ellen.”

“Sam’d hate me for it – she’s his teacher now, Charlie.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t wanna see them all, Dean thought. He just… wasn’t sure he knew how to do it anymore – to just let himself chill, have a laugh, talk about what they’d all been doing. Because what _had_ Dean been doing lately that he wanted to talk about? Well, there’d been the getting orphaned, getting dumped, getting made unemployed, and now also the re-evaluating his ideas about the universe and getting lectured by authority figures, some of whom were aliens. Ha.

But yeah, that job on the phone sex line that none of you know about but Charlie? Nothing to report there.

And much as it made him a bad person who probably _was_ turning into an old hermit already, he didn’t want to hear about how they were doing. He had facebook. He already _knew_ how they were doing, and he knew that they were doing fucking awesome, having got their break not long after Dean had left them.

Dean hadn’t even held a guitar since the crash.

“You’re making excuses and you know it. What about the cool psychic lady?”

Missouri had offered just the day before, and Sam _did_ love her…

But a whole _evening_  of faking being happy in-love with the alien guy when he still wasn’t even sure he could be in the same room as him?

“I could call her,” Dean grumbled cautiously.

“That’s the spirit. I’ll see you at 10pm. With your boyfriend. Don’t be late. I know you’re not busy.”

Dean rolled his eyes, but his mouth twitched in the begrudging smile that Charlie always succeeded in pulling from him no matter his mood. “Alright, we’ll be there,” Dean told her, but the moment he hung up the phone he leant back in the old leather chair and stared at the ceiling in despair. What the hell had he just got them into?


	8. Night Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I am a human being; nothing human can be alien to me.” – Terence

Cas had hardly shared Dean’s nerves, but he did feel a little trepidation that he was going to let Dean down somehow (and it bothered him that he wasn’t sure when the thought of that had started getting to him). It could be very strange, and difficult sometimes, navigating a room full of strangers and their loud, crowding thoughts that all wished and demanded things of him without knowing it. Already, Dean’s thoughts were distracting.

“Please stop doing that,” Cas said eventually. Dean turned, fingers dancing over the steering wheel of his car. It was a display of his anxiety, Cas knew – Dean leaned on this vehicle for support in a way he would never think to on another sentient person.

“Huh? Stop what?” Dean asked, before his green eyes skittered quickly away from Cas’ focus again.

“Thinking so loud. About what happened between us. And also about Ash’s haircut. I’m not sure why that part is so interesting to you.”

Dean scowled. “Can’t you just turn your freaky mind-reading trick off first?”

“No, I don’t think so. Understanding your speech would be much harder, for a start, if it _was_ something I was able to do.”

Dean huffed out a breath. “Well. I can’t exactly stop thinking.”

“Oh _thinking’s_ fine. I imagine you need that to drive properly. But this _fixating_ is nauseating and can’t be healthy for you.”

There was a tense silence for a moment, and all that Cas had to listen to was the music from the car radio and the incoherent rage of noise coming from Dean’s mind.

“For the record I think your hair looks more attractive.”

“Yeah, but the mullet thing he has is way more of a rock look,” Dean moped, apparently willing to let his anger go. “I just could never pull something like that off.”

Cas cocked his head to one side, considering it. “Not necessarily,” he asserted.

“You think?”

“What you have looks better, but it wouldn’t look terrible, though it would be in danger of swamping your more delicate features.”

“Huh. _Delicate features._ Not heard that one before.”

They were quiet now, both mentally and vocally, and it was… peaceful. Comfortable, even.

“I liked Sam’s babysitter,” Cas offered. “Though she seemed to think twice as fast as other humans.”

Dean smiled. “Ah. See, she’s a psychic.”

“You believe in psychics but not in me?”

Dean narrowed his eyes and Cas snorted at him.

“My Mom woulda loved you. That’s what kills me in all this,” Dean admitted, muttering. “I mean my Dad woulda thought you were interesting, he would have tried studying you and putting photos of you up all over the internet or whatever. But Mom… yeah. She would have wanted to talk to you. Hear all your stories.” He smiled slightly as he stared out at the road. “But, hey. I guess it’s still a good thing it was Sam that walked into that pound when he did, huh? Still got one space geek left here to love you right.”

“And what about you?” Cas asked, and it felt almost as though the words had escaped his mouth without his consent.

Dean shifted in his seat and risked a glance over at him. “Well what about me?”

“What do you think of me?” Cas tried for a small smile. “What do you want from me?”

“Can’t you tell me, mind reader?”

Cas studied Dean’s face again. It did nothing to help him read his mind, but it was starting to help tell Cas _something_. “No,” he said honestly. “I can’t tell what you think of me, and I can’t tell what you want.”

Dean opened his mouth slightly, and Cas could hear something of what he wasn’t saying, which was largely wondering _why would anyone care what I want?_ But then they were there, and Cas didn’t want to push him on it. Making people uncomfortable was no longer so amusing as he’d originally found it.

“So you leave-”

“-the talking up to you. Yes, I know, Dean.”

As he knocked on the door, Dean looked irritated, and then oddly apologetic. “Look, man, I’m sorry I’ve been kind of a dick. But you should enjoy tonight. They’re good people.”

“They’re family of sorts, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed, smiling faintly. “Yeah they are.”

And then a whirlwind with long blonde hair burst out of the door, and if Cas hadn’t been able to sense Dean’s surge of joy he might have worried that the woman was trying to attack him.

“I missed you so fucking much,” she said, her voice muffled from speaking into Dean’s shoulder as he picked her up. Jo, Cas heard, and processed this.

For a moment, Cas couldn’t help feeling some jealousy at the sight of her. She was family to Dean, and the mere sight of her gave him so much happiness. Seeing Cas generally only made Dean feel confused.

“You got fucking _tanned_ , Jo, where the hell have you been?”

She pulled away from him and grinned. “Everywhere, man. It’s been… something.”

Now Cas felt jealousy from Dean too, emanating from the man in steady waves. “I bet,” was all Dean said aloud.

Jo’s mind was filled meanwhile with backwards thoughts to the open road she’d recently left, filled with an endless stream of strangers with different stories to pass onto her, different crowds to make happy, to make _dance_ , and Cas understood something of the longing filling both humans, understood something of what Dean felt he’d lost. Then Jo to turned to look at him, and it was as though her mind had de-aged by a decade from the sheer _glee_ coming off of it.

“So you’re Dean’s new man?” she asked him, her eyes flicking to Dean, teasing and almost cruel as they laughed at him. But there was fondness there too, and a lot of love and protectiveness, and Cas felt something like trepidation as her eyes gave him a once-over.

It was the first time he could remember feeling self-conscious of any of the physical forms he had found for himself. “Yes,” he told her, and her face broke out into another broad smile, as Cas heard Dean try to force himself into relaxing.

“Alright,” she said, “come on up then. I can interrogate you properly over pizza – Benny ordered already. I hope you like Hawaiian - Cas, right?”

“Yes,” he said again. It seemed to be the safest reply.

“No one likes Hawaiian,” Dean grumbled behind him as they trundled up the stairs, but there was a lightness to his tone too. This was an old argument, and one which made him happy, comfortable.

“ _Heathens_ like _you_ just don’t give pineapple its proper respect,” Jo sniped, and they continued like that all the way up the staircase. Cas was quite content to listen, and preferred to stay quiet when they entered the flat and everyone wanted to speak to them. It had been easier as a dog, Cas thought. No one had expected him to talk back then.

Both Benny and Ash were hugging types. As was Charlie, who winked at Cas as she stole a hug, and then so was Garth, the skinny man from the animal shelter. His appearance made things a little more difficult.

“Cas, huh?” He snapped his fingers and smiled. “Like your dog, right?”

“Private joke,” Dean said quickly. “His name’s really…Steve _._ ”

“ _Steve,_ ” Charlie repeated and raised an eyebrow at Dean, while her thoughts continued on with _Are you fucking kidding me?_

 _“_ But I’ve pretty consistently been going by Cas since I arrived here,” Cas insisted sternly. He’d been given a name, and whichever form he was in he appreciated the way that it centred him, grounded him. Crowley had called his power limitless. A small child had looked at him only once and told him that he was incredible, but that everything had limits – that everything could be labelled, mapped, quantified, be a part of the world – and for now Cas clung to the idea. Much as he hated feeling spied on and feared recapture, he loved the idea that these boys he’d found for himself could see him, could know him.

“Cas, then, d’you want a beer?” The taller man – the drummer, Benny – asked.

“Yes,” Cas said confidently, without even glancing at Dean for confirmation.

*

It was… going well, Dean realised with some amazement. He was introducing this guy from outer space as his boyfriend to a group of his closest friends and so far no one seemed to suspect a damn thing.

It was almost insulting.

“How’d you always find the pretty ones anyway?” Jo asked as she came and sat down next to him on Benny’s tattered leather couch.

Dean raised his beer. “That’d be natural charm and good looks. Jealous?”

“Of _you_?” she snorted, “Confused maybe. So how much time was there between Bela and Columbo over there?”

Dean flicked his eyes up to the ceiling and, sensing weakness, Jo edged closer towards him then drew in a hissing breath. “ _Dean Winchester_ , did you cheat on your girlfriend? I mean I am not exactly Bela’s biggest fan but that is _low_ …”

“You sound exactly like your Mom when you talk like that, y’know. And I _didn’t_. I mean she _thinks_ I did but c’mon, Jo, you know me better than that.”

She shrugged and leaned back in her seat again. “Well, I know you well enough to know that you’ve been kinda going off the rails since the crash – understandably,” she added hurriedly before glancing at Cas again, who Garth and Charlie had engaged in what looked like a very intense conversation. “But this guy… he seems good for you,” she said, with a fondness to her tone that made Dean feel a little bad. So much for worrying they wouldn’t fall for the whole fake boyfriend thing.

As though Jo could hear his thoughts as easily as Cas could, she continued with, “I swear he calms you down or something. I mean, man, was I psyched to see you again, but I was kinda worried you wouldn’t seem this… happy.”

Dean took another drink of his beer. “So long as I can find a job and keep that fucking social worker off my back, I guess I am.”

“Y’know we’d get you back in the band again in a heartbeat, but-”

“Social worker’s not exactly gonna be too excited about me travelling around the country with a nine year old in tow, I’m guessing,” Dean finished for her, before adding a little snidely, “And anyway, Ash seems to be working out great for you guys.”

She looked at him warningly. _“Dean_.”

He waved a dismissive hand. “S’cool. I like the guy. And he plays well.” Maybe a little too in love with his wow wow pedal for Dean’s liking, but hey, no one was perfect.

“You guys ever played together?” she asked, and Dean recognised too late the shit-eating little glint of a smile hidden in her eyes.

“Oh no. I ain’t played in months, period, Jo.”

“We should put a stop to that then,” she said sweetly and stood up, ignoring Dean’s the iron grip of Dean’s fingers clasped around her wrist. “Who’s jamming with me? I’m getting my bass out,” she announced to the room with a grin and a waggle of her hips.

“No one’s drunk enough yet for pretentious band recitals, Jo,” Benny told her warily, earning a toothy encouraging grin from Dean. Benny, as the drummer, was easily irritated by the barrage of guitar players coming out before he was drunk enough to find something ridiculous to use as a drum set. But Jo ignored his grumpy expression and went over to punch him on the arm.

“We’ve had a good amount of drinking – right, groupies?” she said, turning to look over at Charlie, Garth and Cas. Garth shrugged thoughtfully.

Charlie coughed at her. _“Groupies_?”

“Yes,” Cas said, so firmly that Dean had to spit his bottle out of his mouth after spluttering too much. His blue eyes gleamed as he looked over at Dean, and Dean felt himself shudder as he allowed himself to remember the last time those eyes had looked at him for so long… which would of course be The Kitchen Incident.

“I haven’t heard Dean play before,” he stated, and the sonofabitch was _smiling._

“Well you’ll have to wait till later, _babe_ ,” Dean snapped, eyes narrowing. “I don’t have my guitar with me.”

“Oh, don’t worry dude, I brought a spare,” Ash said, sitting up straighter and smiling guilelessly. And damn that dick for being so fucking likeable.

“Hear when you’ve been beaten, man,” Charlie advised as she took a seat. “The head groupie is ready to listen.”

“Hey, who made you the head groupie?” Garth asked, sounding genuinely puzzled as he sat down next to her. The third ‘groupie’ did not sit next to them, but walked over to Dean – and had Cas’ hips always swung like a fucking snake’s or was that just a tonight thing? – and parked himself down next to him. Although, _next_ to him maybe wasn’t right – that implied he was leaving Dean alone instead of _splaying_ right over Dean. One hand was possessively raking its fingers through Dean’s hair and the other… was positioned dangerously near to Dean’s crotch. “I would particularly like it if I could hear you sing,” he said, right up in Dean’s face with his voice plaintive and his words almost… drawled. Was the alien _drunk_ on only a couple of beers? Well, it wasn’t like he’d have ever tried alcohol before…

But Dean couldn’t actually bring himself to _care_ whether or not his not-boyfriend was drunk when Cas was staring at him like that, like he was looking for shortcuts to get Dean naked faster. And Dean was certain that the whole room was looking at them now but he couldn’t quite bring himself to look away from those eyes long enough to check on that.

“Could you do that for me, Dean?”

And Dean could only nod. He thought he could hear muffled laughter from someone, but he wasn’t all that sure from where, but he didn’t care – because Cas’ lips were closing in on his own…

For the first time, though nobody else except maybe Charlie would actually get that part.

But this was pretty… well.

Out of this world.

It was Benny who snapped Dean out of the wet kissing and the cheesy puns that only Cas’d be able to hear him make by clapping his hands together a few moments – or minutes? Maybe minutes – later into the kiss. “Hey, hey. Down boys. My that’s about time for you to be going and getting a room, except since the only room available is mine, you’re just gonna stop before this gets out of hand – right?

Cas pulled away first, dragging Dean’s lower lip with him with his teeth and Dean was suddenly aware that Cas had been straddling him.

And now he was left with a rock-hard issue in the pants department which guitar playing was not gonna be able to sort. He coughed awkwardly as Charlie in particular stared down at him in a mixture of amusement and amazement. “Uh, right,” he said, slapping his hands down on his legs. “So, uh, what you got for me there, Ash?”

*

Charlie had always enjoyed listening to the band play. Especially if it meant that she got to give criticism. Like, hey, would it kill you guys to start playing some covers of anything from _this_ century?

But yeah, it warmed her soft heart seeing Dean, moaning all the way about his vanished callouses, picking up Ash’s guitar and tuning it, and actually getting on with his replacement without bringing in that special brand of bitterness into play at the same time. Dean was actually being sociable. She’d seen people get him _laughing_.

Even if he wouldn’t quit staring at his space boyfriend like the puppy neither of them were supposed to be at this moment, Charlie thought with a shake of her head. And it only got worse when Jo professed that she was tired of singing and ordered Dean to start singing something.

“Why not Ash?” he responded immediately.

“Trust me, no one wants that.”

“I can’t sing a note,” Ash confessed with some pride.

“Well neither can I,” Dean insisted. And he was right, Charlie thought agreeably. He didn’t have the sweetness or power or technique that Jo had in spades, but there was _something_ there – the tone, and more, the feeling he put in behind it every time, she mused as she listened to him reluctantly start in on something she recognised as Hendrix. (Because Dean was horrifically predictable when it came to music.) And then she stopped concentrating on Dean and looked over at Cas, who was of course watching Dean. Watching the alien listen like that was an experience. Had he even heard music before? That wasn’t something she’d thought to ask him the day before.

That look of _awe_ on his face suggested maybe not… but then maybe that had more to do with Dean than the music he was producing.

Encouraging as she’d been earlier of the whole get-them-together mission and jubilant as she still was to see it succeeding so well, it worried her, looking at Cas’ face. There was too much feeling there, too much intensity there for someone who by his own admission was still new to feeling _anything_ for someone other than himself.

Yes, she worried; but, watching them, she wasn’t certain who she worried _for._ Dean, who now held the heart of an impossibly powerful otherworldly being, or the being himself.

But then she started listening to Dean’s singing again, and what she heard was enough to decide her.

“It’s alright, he said, take anything you want from me-”

Dean, she was definitely more scared for Dean.

Dean, who _never_ changed the pronouns when he sang. As an enthusiastic bisexual singer, that was a like, a basically _sacred_ principal for him.

“ _anything_ ,” he looked up again, and obviously that look went to Cas, “fly on, little wing, fly on…”

But Dean never got to the end of his song, the first that he’d played alone since his parent’s death, Charlie was sure. Because before he got into the last bit of guitar solo, the room blew up.

Or, at least, that’s what it felt like at the time. Because suddenly the lights were out and there was this… smoke everywhere, and everyone was yelling – and something was _roaring_ …

 _Cas_.

Yesterday, chilling with aliens had sounded like such a great idea… Because that’s what this was about, Charlie realise. Those people who were after him must have caught up to him again, just like she’d teased Dean that they might.

 “Get down!” she yelled, hoping that this was actually the safe option to be taking as she ducked down to the floor and heard something make noises which… weren’t human.

Oh god, oh god, oh god, Ripley she was not.

Charlie kept her head firmly down on the floor and only hoped that everyone else was doing the same…

But she could hear Garth beside her giving a string of his personalised phrases of exclamation – so he had to be watching. Garth Fitzgerald IV was braver than she was. Shit.

Charlie took her head off the floor. It was still too dark to see very much, but she thought that she could make out Dean punching something, and Cas… well. That great big tiger in the middle of the room had to be Cas.

They had a possibly drunk and a definitely angry tiger contained in Benny’s parents’ painfully small apartment. And it seemed to be doing some considerable damage, judging by the smashing noises. Then he seemed to pick something – or maybe it was a someone – off of the floor, and that was definitely the _window_ smashing this time.

_Fuck, fuck, fuck._

Charlie covered her head with her hands again and stayed down until she realised that the smoke had started lifting.

Cas was a man again, so that was one good thing – but his face was bloodied and his eyes were vacant. More than she’d ever thought of him, he didn’t look human. He didn’t even look as though he was there in the room with them. And though his face seemed to do nothing to suggest it, she just knew that he was very angry.

And though the aliens who had assumedly been the ones attacking them seemed to be long gone, Charlie still felt frightened.

Dean looked the worse for wear too. Also on his feet, he seemed to be limping, as he looked around the room, and she realised that he was intently counting heads, making sure that he hadn’t lost anyone this time.

_Oh, Dean._

Then Charlie saw what Dean had already noticed and she froze. Ash was still on the floor, and his head seemed to be bleeding. He wasn’t conscious. “Ash!” Jo shouted as she jumped off of the couch she’d been perched on and on over to the drummer’s side. After she managed to prop his head up, he blearily blinked his eyes open.

“I don’t feel so great… hey, did we have a cat in here?”

“How many fingers am I holding up, Ash?”

As Ash started squinting in concentration at Jo’s hand, Benny got to his feet and walked over to Cas, slamming him up against the wall. It wasn’t done in a particularly vicious way – he just seemed determined. That was Benny.

“Right. You’re gonna tell me what the hell that was all about,” he demanded, his voice cool and steady.

Dean was still staring at Ash, but his jaw had hardened with something like resigned defeat. He wasn’t going to stand up for Cas, Charlie saw, but he wasn’t going to join in with trying to vilify him either. No, he was going to hear all of Benny’s disdain and listen to every word like it was meant for him alone.

“This isn’t his fault, Benny,” Charlie spoke, her voice hoarse as though she’d been screaming, which she was almost certain that she hadn’t been. Benny didn’t even look round at her.

“Oh yeah? Well something mighty screwed up just went on, and I ain’t all that sure what just happened, but I am sure that both my window and Ash’s head are broken. So I’d like some kind of explanation, because I got a feeling like you might have one.”

Cas still looked even now like he was… barely there. Like the body was there with them but that the aliens had succeeded in running off with his mind, only leaving behind that almost palpable rage. But then he looked over at Dean, and though he still didn’t look human, he did at least look like a dog, waiting for his orders. But when Dean still wouldn’t meet his eyes his gaze skittered over to Charlie.

 _No_ she thought strongly. No, Cas couldn’t tell a room filled with frightened, confused and angry people what he really was. They were good people, and individually, on their good days,  Charlie would tell him to screw it, and tell them all.

But not like this.

Cas, blessedly, must have heard her. Because he turned back to Benny and said, “I don’t know what happened either,” he said slowly. “But getting angry with me will not help your friend.”

Benny heaved in a breath, and without looking away from Cas he called out, “Ash? You alright, buddy?”

“A-ok compadre.”

“He’s gonna need an ambulance, Benny. Garth could you-”

“On it,” Garth assured her, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket and punching in the numbers, Charlie was just still admiring that he was able to do all that without his fingers shaking.

Benny let go of Cas’ coat. “Alright. But you stay away from Dean,” he said, and something in his voice was shaking as held up a finger to Cas, who stared back, his face impassive.

“Dean, maybe you should take Cas home,” Charlie told him quietly.

*


	9. Goodbyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I've always felt like an alien trapped in a human form. We all do at some time or other; for me it's a permanent state, and I'm still unsure if Earth is a penance or a reward.” - Douglas Coupland

Crowley was not feeling at his best when Naomi called for an update on how things were progressing. Kevin was still whining at him – even after he’d done _exactly_ like his Mom had ordered them and waited until the kid was safely out of the way before making any moves.

And, alright, he’d been lying when he’d given his confident estimation that the creature wouldn’t change when under attack and in the process scare the humans – but hey, lying from him should surely be _expected_ by now.

“No! It didn’t _‘go well_ ’” Kevin was saying to the communications device they had with them, his voice becoming increasingly hysterical as he gave Crowley some looks of complete disdain. Crowley meanwhile was far more concerned about the pain in his leg and the crack in his camouflage.

It the creature’s proficiency at defending itself weren’t so infurating under the circumstances, he’d be extremely impressed. It even looked like it had actually been _socialising_ in there.

What was disturbing was that it had seemed to be defending not only itself, but had seemed to be protecting the humans with him too… and _him_? What had gotten into Crowley now? It was a _thing_ that he had made, it wasn’t supposed to have a gender. He – it – wasn’t _capable._

“What do you mean we’re off the case?”

Now Crowley started paying attention, and fast.

“No, this is a _delicate_ situation here! The primitive life-forms in force here aren’t capable of – what? High Councilwoman?” Kevin put his device back in his pocket. “She hung up on me. I think… I think we’re fired.”

And Crowley started to grin, and the grin quickly became a laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Kevin snapped suspiciously.

“We’re _fired._ Now, _now_ , I can do this however I damn well choose to,” Crowley said, aware that his teeth, his real teeth, were starting to show badly through the cracks in his camouflage. The effect he was sure was terrifying, and the thought delighted him.

Kevin’s eyes widened in alarm. “Oh no. No, no, no, no, no. _What does that mean,_ Crowley?”

*

Cas was a fool to have thought he might have actually escaped his creator, that the hunt for him might have started to ease off. He really had gone soft, gone native, let his guard down.

And with that, he’d let in Sam, who believed in him in all the most terrible ways; let in Dean, who still wasn’t looking at him, wasn’t speaking to him.

Had Dean also allowed himself to forget what Cas was, who hunted him? It was still so hard to tell with Dean - his thoughts were always scattered in a million different directions, none of which seemed to have anything to do with his actions the majority of the time. Cas’ own thoughts meanwhile were… cloudy. The drink had done that. If Cas had the opportunity he was not sure he’d be trying any more of that.

The man with all the hair that Dean had been so jealous of… he was injured because of Cas. And Cas was now feeling something of that _guilt_ which so constantly preyed on Dean. Or, perhaps he more felt that he _should_ feel it, which was even more confusing.

Then he felt something that was even worse at the edge of his mind: someone else’s thoughts, and the someone was familiar.

The social worker.

And he wasn’t thinking friendly, amused-sounding thoughts today, oh no.

“Dean,” Cas hissed, grabbing the man’s arm and pushing him against the stairwell wall. Dean allowed himself to be moved with no comment.

“The social worker – Henrickson – he’s out there now. He saw the broken window. He’s about to see the ambulance.” Dean only stared back at him blankly: the only sign that he had heard Cas was that his shoulder sagged slightly under Cas’ hands.

“Dean, listen to me, this is-”

“Bad, I know, I get it,” Dean bit out, blinking. And though his mind was still... almost blank, those eyes… they burned, deep and hot with despair and anger.

“Well then – let’s go and meet him,” Dean said, and moved away from Cas down the stairs and out the door.

Cas could only stand there for a few moments, wondering whether he should follow. For the first time he thought – really thought – about someone other than himself. Others…

If Sam was taken away from Dean, if both boys were left alone in the world, well then that would be the direct result of Cas’ actions and everything that had followed in the wake of them.

Cas couldn’t breathe – he honestly didn’t feel as though he was able to breathe.

How did they all do it? How did they all keep on moving every day with all that _guilt_ hanging so heavy around them?

And it only got worse when Cas forced himself at least to move down the last of the steps, and stand at the closed door, listening to Henrickson tell Dean, “I know you’re trying, Dean. But if I don’t think about what’s best for Sam then I just ain’t doing my job right.”

“Dean muttered something inaudible, but Cas could _feel_ the low throb in his mind of pain, of defeat.

“I mean what the hell even happened to that window up there, Dean?”

“We were… robbed.”

Henrickson clearly didn’t believe that for even a moment. And Cas wasn’t sure that he could stand anymore of this pain, this guilt, so he took a smaller form as a lizard, and as soon as he was out in the open air he became a bird.

He felt rather than saw Dean watch him go.

*

Naomi spun around several time in her chair before facing Abaddon. “The agents sent after Crowley’s creature have thus far proved inadequate beyond anything I could have feared.” She looked up at her best officer. “You won’t fail me.”

A smile quirked at the edge of Abaddon’s large, toothy mouth. “No, I won’t.”

*

Sam had missed Missouri. Most adults spent most of the time trying to talk down to him, but she just sorta talked sideways to him, like she thought he was an equal, like she thought he was smart. When she asked him to go up to bed, she didn’t hover over him to make sure he brushed his teeth right – she just expected him to get it done, so he did. He’d just gotten into his Pyjamas when he heard Dean at the door – earlier than they thought they’d be back.

He heard Dean and Missouri talking for a few minutes – and using very serious tones too. Sam was pretty sure it couldn’t be about him, he’d been good all night. But he was curious, so he got back out of bed and sat on the top of the stairs. “Hey, Dean,” he called. Then he squinted, and panicked slightly as he realised that something was missing. “Where’s Cas?”

“Aw, he just needed some alone time, Sammy,” Dean said, and plastered on a wide smile. Now Sam was _really_ worried. A “Sammy” and then a big fake smile. Dean was not ok. But not in a stumbling home drunk not-ok way, more like he was… like when he’d come home from the hospital and come to get Sam from Ellen and Jo’s, Sam remembered with an unwelcome _thud_ in his chest. When he wouldn’t answer any of Sam’s questions but just kept holding him tight and repeating, “Everything’s gonna be ok, Sammy…”

And now that look was back on his face.

“What happened, Dean?” Sam asked slowly as he moved down the stairs a step at a time.

“I should go,” Missouri said softly, and maybe even a little… tearfully?

But that was wrong. Because Missouri never cried, Sam thought with new terror as she left the house and shut the door on them.

“C’mere, Sammy,” Dean said, holding out his arms. And the fake smile was still there but it was looking more tired by the second. And he was asking for a hug. Sam couldn’t remember the last time Dean had done that.

Still in shock, Sam came down the rest of the stairs and let himself be held, breathing in the scent of Dean’s old leather jacket, of their _Dad’s_ old leather jacket…

“Dean, is… is Cas dead? Did they catch him?”

“No, he’s not dead.”

But there was something in Dean’s voice… “Are you mad at him?”

“No Sam, I’m not mad at him,” Sam’s head moved as Dean’s chest inflated with the deep shuddering breaths he was taking. “Hey, you… you wanna put on some _Star Trek_ or something?”

Sam looked up in suspicion. “Really?”

“Sure.”

“Whichever series I want?”

“Whatever you want, Sam.”

*

After Sam fell asleep on him sometime after two, Dean carried him upstairs and tucked him into bed. He hadn’t done that kinda thing enough, Dean realised sharply as he watched his little brother breathe in and out. Just spending time with him, looking after him – and tucking him in just like their Mom used to.

He’d screwed up.

No wonder Henrickson was taking Sam away from him.

No wonder Cas had fucked off.

Reluctant to leave for his own bedroom yet, Dean sat for a minute in the chair by his bed and watched Sam sleep. This was the chair his Mom used to spend hours sitting in reading the kid stories, with Sam sitting up in his bed, wide-eyed and begging her for just one more.

And Dean had tried so many times to blame her for what a mess their lives had turned into – after all, like Cas had said, it was _technically_ all her fault. But he remembered he laugh whenever she’d turned back into Sam’s room to read Sam one more story and Dean just _couldn’t_. It was far easier to blame himself for not being able to stop her, his Dad for encouraging her, the other driver for not stopping, or Sam for just seeming too much like her some days for Dean to deal with… And then there was Cas, who’d crashed into their lives making them so much better, so much more alive, and so much worse.

Dean wondered idly if he’d ever see the alien again, if he’d even know if his freaky creator caught up with him again. Because though he craved so fucking badly not to care, Dean couldn’t stop himself remembering – not what they’d done in the kitchen, not what his mouth had felt like on Dean’s… but that blue-eyed tiger standing over him after something had knocked him down, roaring out a challenge to _dare_ come near Dean Winchester again.

Weird, considering all the danger they’d been in at the time, but Dean couldn’t remember the last time anything had ever made him feel so protected, so safe.

After what was probably a creepy length of time to be sitting watching his brother sleep, Dean gave up on whatever he was trying to do and headed into his own bedroom, lying down on his bed fully clothed and grim faced.

He wasn’t expecting Cas to show up, but the moment he heard the bird tapping at the window, he knew that’s what it had to be. Lucky he’d come to one of the windows that actually opened that far, Dean thought dully as he let Cas in and a man wearing his Dad’s old trench coat stood in front of him again.

“Heya, Cas,” Dean muttered, and fell back on the bed. When had letting a shapeshifting alien into his bedroom started to feel normal? Dean wondered as Cas shook the rain out of his hair.

“Sam?” he asked.

“Asleep.”

“And tomorrow?” Dean thought that it’d be possible for the tone of the guy’s voice to lower, but wow, it had managed it.

“The social worker’ll be coming around. And if he doesn’t like what he sees, still, I think he’s taking him away.” Dean kept his voice flat and toneless, fighting with everything in him to keep the rage and the grief and the _fear_ from slipping out.

“We can’t let that happen.”

Dean shrugged.

“He _needs_ you, Dean. You’re his brother.”

“Yeah, and what if that ain’t enough? What if he needs something… something I can’t give him.” Dean hated his treacherous voice for breaking where it did. “No one needs me around. I’m poison, Cas, in case y’didn’t get that already. All I ever do is screw shit up.” He laughed darkly. “Hell, you’ve been on Earth for how long and you already make a better guardian than me.”

“That’s not true, Dean. Give me the word, and I could fly you both somewhere-”

“Where, Cas? Where are we gonna go that’s gonna make me any less of a shitty parent, that’s gonna stop your people from hunting you down? Hell, I don’t even know if I took you seriously when you said they were coming after you, I was too busy trying to work out what trick you were playing on me. And now Ash is hurt and they’re taking Sam away, and I-”

Dean stopped to take in a breath. What the hell was he? No parents, no job, no band, no pain in the ass little brother to look after… just a sexy voice on the end of a phone and a dumb kid who could barely keep the bills paid. Who’d be completely alone.

“No,” he heard Cas say. He would be answering one of Dean’s panicked thoughts, but Dean was too tired to work out which one this was in response to. Because then Cas had his hands holding Dean’s arms, keeping Dean on his feet. “No,” Cas repeated.

At this point Dean wasn’t sure the alien knew what he was talking about either, Dean only knew that he was hurting, that he was angry and scared and that he _wanted._

He wanted too damn much.

Dean pulled sharply at the lapels on Cas’ coat, forcing him in towards him, and pushed his own mouth forward to Cas’. It was messy – Dean was pretty sure that Cas barely had time to react, to know what to do, but he was kissing back, and for now that was enough to help Dean drown out the rest of the world.

So he fell back on his bed once more, this time pulling Cas down with him, the alien going without complaint as Dean splayed his fingers, with one hand already burying deep into Cas’ hair and the other now firmly cupping Cas’ ass, pushing it down to force Cas into a grinding motion against him. Because Dean needed this he needed he _wanted…_

And Cas was going to give it to him, Cas who’d been the one to put him in this mess.

But though the alien obligingly started to push his crotch down against Dean’s in the rhythm Dean had set, he wasn’t giving it as hard, as fast as he has to _know_ that Dean was needing. Because tonight Dean didn’t want to be looked at like he was some kind of cute puzzle to be figured out and treasured. He wanted to be fucked hard into the next week, when tomorrow would already be behind him.

Besides, after tonight the last thing that Dean deserved was to get treated _nice._

A start came from the alien at that thought, but then it almost seemed to spur him into an even more determined attempt to act the gentle lover.

Dean really, really, didn’t want gentle.

He continued to bite, to tug at Cas’ lip, giving out little groans as his hands scrabbled all over Cas’ body… his body…. Which was suddenly so much less of a weight over Dean _…_

When Dean opened his eyes, it was Bela looking down at him. “Is this what you’d prefer, Dean?” her voice pitched far lower and more menacing than Bela’s had ever been.

“No,” Dean choked. “C’mon, man, quit fucking around.”

Bela – it was too hard to think of the body he was holding as anything _but_ Bela – blinked down at him with blue eyes that didn’t belong in her face. “But I’m not a man, Dean, not really.” She tilted her head to the side in a way that was just so damn _Cas_ it was creepy. “I’m not really anything, am I? And you hate thinking that I have more than one form, it ‘weirds you out’, doesn’t it?”

“Ok, no way are we using sex to sort out your existential bullshit,” Dean grunted, rolling his eyes and trying to slip out from under Bela-Cas, who still had him pinned.

“And no way should we be using anything as a means for you to – to _punish_ yourself,” said Cas, who was suddenly Cas again. Except… not, Dean realised sharply as he sat up and faced him. None of them were Cas, not really.

“His name was Jimmy. He was passing through. I believe I frightened him.”

“Do you… do you have a real form?”

“Real? They’re all _real_ , Dean. My original form is more… potential than anything else.” He looked away from Dean. “And a potential which seems to, as I believe my creator intended, mainly cause misfortune to those around me. And for that I am sorry Dean.”

“What you’re saying you’re cursed or something? Fuck, do _I_ seem like good luck to you?” Dean hated his voice for getting steadily higher, but he couldn’t seem to stop it. They were all leaving. Even Cas was gonna try and leave. Again.

“Hell, Sam was right,” Dean went on as Cas continued to look at the floor and say nothing. “You _are_ family. Might not have taken all that long, but he _was_ right about that much.” _Don’t you go anywhere_ , Dean thought, hard, still unable to form the words aloud.

But the alien only said, “I’m sorry, Dean,” again, and left the room, quietly, still wearing their Dad’s old coat. Dean didn’t do a thing to stop him, but he did hurl a lamp across a room not long after he left.

_There you go, Mom, Dad,_ Dean thought bitterly. _Real alien life found by Sam, while your other kid hit on it and scared it off._

_You must be so proud._

_*_

Cas knew that Sam would be asleep but he went into his room anyway, unable to think about leaving completely until he had done so. He had known this boy for a mere three days, Cas thought as he looked down at the sleeping figure. Sam hadn’t even needed three minutes to believe in Cas, to want to help him. Dean, sensibly, hadn’t taken to him so simply.

Cas noticed the book Sam had read to him the other night sitting out and Cas picked it up, flicking through to look at the pictures. What had been the _right_ in that story was the little girl who’d worked very hard no matter what danger she faced or friends she made to make her way home to her family.

But would it have been so wrong, Cas wondered, if Dorothy had remained in the technicolour land that she’d so dreamed of?

“Cas?”

Cas turned around to see Sam sitting up in his bed, his hair ruffled, and rubbing at his eyes. “Where were you?”

Cas smiled and sat down on the bed beside him. “Around. I like flying. It’s calming.”

Sam grinned. “I thought you would. Hey, maybe one day you could take me flying with you!”

“I’d need to be something bigger than a raven for that.”

“Sure. I mean – you don’t need to be something real, right? So what about…” Sam thought hard about an image of a large creature, flying through the sky on giant leathery wings, and scales that gleamed and smoke coming out of its nostrils.

“That does look large enough,” Cas said fondly. “And you are very smart to think of it.”

He had only ever been alone before meeting the Winchesters, he reminded himself fiercely. There was no reason that he couldn’t do it again.

But why did leaving have to hurt so much?

“I will try that for you one day. But maybe not… now. Now I – I have to go away.”

“Did Dean ask you to leave?” Sam asked, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.

“No, he asked me to stay.”

“Oh,” Sam said quietly. “So you _want_ to go then.”

“Not really,” Cas admitted.

“Then stay!”

“By staying I am putting you in danger, Sam. And that wouldn’t, as you say, be right. I understand that now.”

“Well you’re putting _you_ in danger by leaving,” Sam pointed his stubbornly, sticking his chin out. “I thought I was supposed to be your shield.”

Yes, he would be a shield to all the world if only it would let him, this incredible boy who had once seemed so unimportant, Cas thought. And the thought, though one he might have once found amusing or confusing, now worried him. There would be other Tyson Brady’s out there in the world, and Sam would have to fight them on his own now.

“I don’t think they care so much about stopping you getting hurt anymore,” Cas said carefully. “So that isn’t something I want to risk.”

Sam nodded. “Ok, I get it. You’re trying to be a hero. Just… don’t forget about us, ok?”

“Never,” Cas told him fiercely, honestly.

Sam nodded again. “Good. Because I will remember you, you know that right?” Then he smiled, and Cas felt as though something inside him was being shredded apart. “I always remember everyone who leaves. I am so glad I got to meet you, Cas.”

“And I you, Sam.”

And then he held out his hand, remembering that this was how the boy had greeted him on their first meeting, but the boy ignored it, and instead threw his skinny arms around Cas’ entire body, and held on tightly. Tentatively, Cas managed to raise one arm and pat the boy’s head, carefully flattening his dark hair. Hair like their father, that’s what Sam had told him. Dean had hair more like their mother’s.

What did Cas have? Currently he had taken on a form which he felt suited him, and to it he added his eyes, the only part of him, along with the coat he’d been given, that was… his. There was no one he could look back to and say, they gave me their hair, no family he could find his way home to.

He was and would always be alone. And for the first time that thought did not make him feel special, it only made him feel afraid, and very small.

It was a long time before Cas let go of the boy in his arms.

*


	10. Attack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers.” - Joan Didion

“Cas is gone,” Sam said, as Dean hunted through the kitchen cupboards to see if they had any cereal left.

Dean forced his voice to keep steady, to remain in control. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. He said he didn’t want us to be in danger anymore. I’m sorta worried about him,” Sam admitted, frowning at his orange juice. “He seemed really down when he left and he hasn’t got anyone but us.”

_Worry about you and me, kid,_ Dean thought. Henrickson was supposed to be with them in only another few hours and then neither of them would have anyone else either.

“Well, that was what it was like for him before, right?” Dean pointed out, as he put down a box of lucky charms on the table in front of Sam’s empty bowl, hoping they weren’t too out of date. “And I thought he wanted to go off and see the world?”

“Yeah, he did,” Sam agreed sadly. “But I thought he wouldn’t leave since he, y’know, liked you.”

A lump gathered in Dean’s throat. “Sure he did. He liked us both.”

“No, I mean I think he _like_ liked you. That’s what he was trying to do when you were going around applying for all those jobs – he was trying to impress you, he just wanted to make you like him.” Sam looked stricken as he stared down at his still empty bowl. “And I was encouraging him ‘cause I thought then maybe if it worked then he’d stay. But you didn’t get the jobs because of us.” He looked up at Dean, puppy dog eyes shining. “Did I screw it all up, Dean?”

We all screwed up, Dean wanted to say. Whatever the mess they were in was, they’d all made it. “No, Sammy, ‘course not. I didn’t get those jobs because I suck, alright?”

“No you don’t!” Sam shouted, sounding genuinely offended.

Dean smiled slightly. “Well anyway, I liked him fine.”

Dean let himself think about the abject humiliation that the night before had turned out to be. Maybe if Cas had ever really ‘like liked’ him or whatever then he would have actually fucking stuck around when Dean asked him to.

“Do you think he’ll ever come back to see us?” Sam asked, his voice wistful as he dunked his spoon down into the dubious cereal he’d poured out for himself and swirled it around. Though Dean couldn’t think of a single good answer to give, for his brother’s sake he was trying to formulate one anyway – but then his cell phone started ringing and he didn’t have to.

“Hullo?”

“Dean! Look, I’m sorry about last night – but I think I found you a job!”

Dean had never been so glad to hear Charlie’s voice in his life. A job… one of Henrickson’s unattainable conditions…

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Am not! Chuck – you know Chuck? Runs that little hipster coffee shop that he’s trying to turn into a café-cum-bar? He wants new baristas, and he’s looking for ones with any sort of experience in bartending _and_ he’s looking for someone to do some Saturday night performance work – that’s when he’s gonna start opening late. You _need_ to get down here _now_ though, Dean!”

Dean felt like he was smiling for the first time in weeks. “I can – I can do that. Charlie, where-”

“I’ll meet you outside my work and walk you along there, ok? See me there in ten.”

“Ok.”

Dean slipped the phone back in his pocket with fingers that were nearly trembling.

“Well?” Sam demanded.

“Well, we… we might actually be alright.” Dean let the grin spread across his face and ran over to pick his brother off of his chair to stand him on the table before wrestling him into a hug. “For once in our damn lives something might be going right, Sam.”

Dean felt like he could sing.

Hell, soon someone might actually be _paying_ him to do just that.

“I’ll be back here in like twenty minutes, alright? You just stay _right there_ , don’t move until I get back.”

Sam smiled, and raised an eyebrow sceptically as he pointed down at the table, “Right _here_?”

“Right there. Are you trying to sass me boy?” Dean asked, letting his voice drop about an octave in his best impression of Bobby he could manage. “Don’t disrespect your responsible guardian – if he tells you to stay on a table then you stay on that table.”

“Responsible guardian?”

Dean grinned as he grabbed his car keys and started running for the door. “I am now!”

*

Cas slept in his raven form up in the trees some way away from the Winchester’s home. He liked being a bird, best, perhaps, after being human, which if nothing else felt the most familiar now. He liked the freedom wings were able to give him. And in comparison to the humans, the ravens seemed mostly content to leave him alone. Which was probably for the best, all things considered, Cas mused as he ruffled his wings and opened them wide.

_What now_?

He’d spoken to Sam about seeing the world, and certainly he had the tools to, but now it was a craving for depth and not breath of knowledge that consumed him. What would seeing the whole technicoloured universe mean if he never had a life of his own to return to?

What was it to be a tourist who never stopped travelling?

He heard the younger one’s voice first, and they were speaking English, which struck Cas as odd. It was the mother and her son, Crowley’s contact and his assigned partner in the hunt for his creature.

But of Castiel’s creator himself there was no sign.

Was this some new elaborate trap? Cas wondered, more idly than he might have done once as he looked down at them walking along the road together. Again, they were family. It seemed to take up so much significance in cultures universally, and Cas could understand that this might have more reason behind it than mere biological prioritising.

Perhaps Cas’ reflexes had been dulling, or perhaps he simply no longer cared to the same extent as he once had for his own preservation, because when the young partner of his creator – Kevin, he was called – looked up at him through the lenses Crowley had developed to see him despite all his forms, and pointed, Cas only stared back instead of trying to move away.

“There, Mom, he’s there,” Cas heard him mutter.

And then the contact, the spy, Sam’s school principal, she folded her arms and with great intensity thought out an order that Cas should get down from his tree and speak with them. In response, Cas merely ruffled his feathers again. Why should he?

Then she filled his mind with images of a boy Cas knew very well, and a certainty was able to grow in his mind.

By the time Cas reached the ground he was a tiger again, and growling. They were _daring_ to threaten Sam Winchester. His creator might have given him life, but Sam had given him his name, Sam had given him _everything._

And if Sam was in danger then logically so was Dean…

“I’m not speaking to you while you’re like this,” Ms Tran sniffed and looked away.

Cas let out a loud roar in answer.

“I need to speak with you, ok? I don’t want that little boy harmed any more than you do, so stand up and speak to us civilly so that we can work out some kind of plan.

Though it grated on him to have terms set out before they’d even begun speaking, Cas begrudgingly re-took Jimmy Novak’s form once more.

“What?” he snapped. It was true though, he could understand that they didn’t want Sam harmed. And they _were_ worried… Which didn’t make Cas feel any better.

“Crowley and I aren’t being employed by the council anymore, so he’s gone AWOL, _”_ Kevin stated, in the flat tone of someone who hadn’t slept correctly in days. “He figured that the easiest way to control you would be to get to something you care about, so he’s gone after the kid.”

Cas herd the cocking of a large blaster weapon as Linda Tran looked up at him with steel in her eyes. “But not if we can help it.”

“If I go in there after him, that’ll be exactly what Crowley wants,” Cas said slowly, as he tried not to think on how much worse Dean’s grief for his brother would be if he was not only taken from him, but killed. And it would be no one’s fault but Castiel’s, for leading these wolves to their door.

“Fine,” Cas agreed before either of them could say any more. “Get on.”

And then he became Sam’s dragon. He hoped that the sight of him would make the boy happy, as the Trans reluctantly edged their way onto his back, and held on the scales between his wings. Before taking off, Cas allowed himself a snarling grin. This form… this form he could _like._

*

Sam wasn’t an idiot, he did know better than to open up the door to strangers. But this stranger, who was really all too familiar a face, now, didn’t knock, and he didn’t wait to be invited in. Sam was up in the telescope room – it was too light outside to see anything, but the familiarity of the blocky metal shapes made him feel better after losing Cas and trying to figure out what Dean’s moods were all about – when he heard someone coming up the path and caught sight of them after rushing to the window. He hoped, obviously, that it would be Dean, or even Cas walking up towards him. Maybe Cas just wasn’t sure where to go first, or he wanted to offer to take them with him or something.

But no, that definitely wasn’t Cas, because Sam was certain that his friend would never take on that form unless he was forced into it. It was the man Cas had pointed out as his creator, who looked like a normal enough business-type guy – not all that tall, and wearing a boring suit. But whatever it was making him look human seemed… _broken_ now, because when he looked up at Sam and caught his eye… one of those eyes winking at Sam definitely didn’t look human anyway. And his Smile was almost Harvey Dent, except _worse_ because half of it was grinning with these giant shark teeth.

Sam was in so much trouble, he thought as he opened the window, and threw down with some regret his Dad’s smallest, but one of his heaviest, telescopes. The alien moved but it still managed to hit him on the back of the leg, and he hopped around, snarling hideously as he shouted up, “You cheeky little _prick_.”

Ok, Sam was staying firmly inside now, he decided as he closed up the window again. But who was he supposed to go to for help? Dean was in the middle of something really important… should he call 911? What was he supposed to say if he did?

Oh God – now the alien was getting out this huge gun-thing and pointing it right at the door.

Ok, so the alien was coming into the house now. And he looked very pissed off with Sam, who couldn’t get out of the house.

“Oh Sammy boy! Why don’t you come down here and see me…”

There was nowhere else to hide, there was nowhere to hide…

Panicked, Sam hid himself under the desk, not very well, as he listened to Cas’ creator’s footsteps on the stairs… but then he heard the _roar_ coming from outside and he knew that everything would be alright now. He even risked a quick glimpse out the window – and it wasn’t something he regretted.

Cas looked _magnificent_ and Sam didn’t doubt for a second that this _was_ Cas out there – because what else was cool enough to be a real-life version of Toothless the Night Fury come back to rescue him?

_I’m with the telescopes, Cas!_ Sam screamed out in his head as he crouched back under the desk.

Cas must have turned into something smaller, because just as his creator walked into the telescope room, Sam could hear him thundering up the stairs. The porch still sounded kinda like it might have got damaged though – Dean wasn’t going to like that…

“Ah, Sammy boy,” the alien said, and even though Sam had known he was in the room with him already, he froze as soon as he heard that voice. That big creepy gun thing was now pointed at him, and the alien motioned for Sam to come out, and as Sam slowly started to move, his captor gripped his wrist. Sam didn’t know if he was imagining things, but it felt like his hands might be slimy.

“Cas!” Sam shouted, and Cas, as a tiger, was there in the doorway, snarling his disapproval.

“You see, the problem with taking hostages to hide behind is when you start getting too attached to said hostages,” the alien holding Sam said dryly as the tiger slowly stalked closer towards them, his tail whipping dangerously in the air.

“Then well, then the only logical thing to do is to start taking them as hostages against _you_ and, well, then it’s all got fairly _tiring_ ,” he said with a sigh.

Though Sam wasn’t able to move his head to check, because there was still a gun nestled into his hair, he could tell that Cas’ creator was smiling.

“But tell me, are you glad I picked the smaller one? You seemed so _close_ with his brother just last night….”

Another snarl ripped out of Cas, who prowled a little closer again.

“Uh, uh, uh, no closer. You just stay right where you are. Don’t wanna hurt your old man again, now do you… what is it you’ve been calling him?” he asked Sam.

“Castiel,” Sam growled.

“Alright, Cas-tee-ell. Come with me now, and I won’t hurt your brave little friend here. And since I’m not under Council orders anymore, I won’t even have to kill you. I mean I might,” he shrugged. “We’ll see how things go. See how easy those glitches are to iron out.”

“He’s fine the way he is!”

“Sorry, kid. I don’t let the fans make my decisions.”

Sam thrashed out, stepping on the alien’s foot, and making snarling noises that were almost as loud as the ones Cas had been making.

“There now, pup, quiet down…”

Then Crowley was cut off by his own scream. Something had just _lasered_ through his hand, and there was a hole in the window…

Which seemed to be all the encouragement Cas needed to pounce on Crowley and push him out through the window.

“Cas!” Sam screamed as he watched Cas seamlessly transform back to being a dragon and fly past the house with Crowley clutched in the talons he’d developed to be longer now…

“Ok, kid, let’s get you outside.” It was the younger alien, Ms Trans’ son, the ‘good cop’ on the hunt for Cas, and he had his hand on Sam’s shoulder now. “No,” Sam said, and ran to the other corner of the room, backing himself against the wall.

The alien sighed like the world was ending and everyone was laying the blame on him. “Look, your big friend out there? He’s dangerous. And it’s my job to see that neither him _or_ Crowley come back and hurt you again under any circumstances.”

“Cas wouldn’t hurt me.”

“He was built by a sadistic weirdo who made him to hurt _everyone_ ,” the alien - who still looked so _normal_ , so human – said as he moved closer towards Sam, bending his knees and keeping his arms outstretched and low, like Sam was a wild animal he was trying not to spook. Sam guessed, to this guy, that’s probably exactly what he was.

“Look, I’m under _orders_ not to hurt you. So I’m the one you can definitely trust, ok?”

“No,” Sam said again, and kicked out at the alien’s leg. This time his childish lashing out seemed to work, and Sam managed to run down the stairs and hide in the big broom cupboard in the kitchen.

“Where’d the boy go, Kevin?”

“Do we really have to save him? He just _really_ hurt my leg, Mom…”

There was a whacking noise, and Ms Trans’ voice floated down the stairs again. “Yes. Now go back after him, I’ll try handling those two outside. With any luck we’ll be able to get this situation under control before Naomi tries sending anyone else out.”

Sam curled himself up in a ball. These guys, _Ms Tran_ ,had _lasers_ , real live _laser_ guns.

Sam would think this was the coolest thing to ever happen to him if he wasn’t so damn scared. But he hadn’t actually peed himself yet. That felt like an achievement.

“Hey, kid! Kid, where are you?” There was another long sigh. _“Sam.”_

Sam didn’t dare to even breathe. Then he turned around and Cas was there beside him – he must have snuck in as something small, and now he was still something small-ish. Now he was Sam, it was looking in a mirror that was wrong, that put him backwards and gave him the wrong colour of eyes. And _moving_ of course, which felt weird, having his _wrong_ reflection moving independently of him, even if only to put a finger to his –to Sam’s - lips.

“I’m going to get you somewhere safe, Sam,” Cas murmured quietly with Sam’s voice. For some reason Sam didn’t feel all that reassured, even though this was Cas, who didn’t lie to him. ‘Safe’ just didn’t seem like something that could actually be achieved anymore, even by Cas.

“Where’s your creator guy?”

“Dead, I think.” Cas blinked and shrugged slightly. “I’m not sure, but he wasn’t moving when I left him anyway.”

Sam sniffed the air. “Then where’s that smoke coming from? That _you,_ Cas?”

Cas frowned at him. “No,” he said as they heard Kevin shout, “Crowley _what do you think you’re trying to do?_ What part of _setting a house on fire_ seems inconspicuous to you?”

Crowley said something inaudible in response which was then followed by “-I’m smoking them out.”

“He can turn into a giant fucking flying thing – _somehow_ I don’t think this is going to actually work out for you!”

“We can’t let them set fire to our home,” Sam whispered earnestly, as he tried not to choke. That smoke smell was getting strong now…

“No we can’t,” Cas agreed quietly, and then he nodded. “What would be small enough not to wreck the house further but large enough to remove Crowley and the other two easily?”

Sam thought hard for a minute. “Captain America,” he said confidently, and supplied the image, the knowledge, with his mind. “He can fight _anyone_.”

And then Steve Rogers – the one from the movies, the one that Dean had a crush on, was crouching in front of him, leaning on his mighty shieldasking “Is this it?”

And even though Sam knew that they were being attacked by aliens setting fire to their house, suddenly he couldn’t stop himself from laughing.

*

“Honestly, Chuck, I can’t thank you enough, man. This is… this is… You don’t know how much I needed this, man.”

Chuck, _Dean’s new boss,_ smiled back at him as he held the door open for Dean a little longer. “Don’t, don’t mention it, seriously. I really don’t know a whole lot about how I’m actually gonna make this place a bar and I’m gonna need all the experienced hands I can get on deck.” He scratched at the back of his head. “To be honest, I wouldn’t have thought of it myself, but Becky, my wife, was uh… really keen for a challenge…” He coughed. “Yeah, we’ll talk about the performing later, alright? But if everything goes well it would be cool to get started on that by the end of the month.”

“Absolutely,” Dean gushed, nearly tripping over his feet on his way down the steps.

“Just get here about half an hour early for your shift tomorrow and I’ll start showing you the ropes, alright?”

Dean flashed him back again that might have been a bit much. “You got it, boss.”

Then after Chuck had closed the café door Dean allowed himself a “Whoop!” and a leap into the air to click his heels together, just because he could. What the hell. There was nobody around.

And Dean had a _job_ again.

Which meant he might actually have a fucking _chance_ , or at least a leg to stand on when Henrickson turned up for Sam. When he’d woken up that day, Dean had been prepared to just lie down and give up, but now he felt _alive,_ alive and ready to _fight._

Surely, with this new job, Henrickson had to at least give Dean a _chance_ , right? And then Dean would fucking _deliver._ Sure, there was no Cas, and that hurt like a bitch for no real reason that Dean could actually put into words, but they were clawing back everything else – this time, they were really gonna make it work…

The sound of a fire engine siren blaring up the road past Dean cut off his new positive train of thought.

They didn’t usually see fire trucks round this town, not so close to home. This was a quiet end of town, it was near to the middle-of-nowhere end of town where they lived where it was mostly just trees anyway… Something tightened sickeningly in Dean’s chest as he watched the truck turn up in the direction he’d just been about to drive down, as soon as he got back in his car.

Dean ran to his car, all his blissed out thoughts gone.

*

Cas decided not to leave his creator as dead as he might have done, partly because he was worried that Sam wouldn’t like him for it. He had seen the horror on the boy’s face, he hadn’t even needed to hear his thoughts to know what Sam had been thinking when he’d mentioned the possibility earlier. So he merely made certain that Sam got out safely, that he got the fire out before it could spread out of the living room – with the help of Crowley’s accomplices, who seemed eager to avoid any more human attention – and then forcing Crowley out, using his very useful shield. Sam had been particularly insistent in his mind’s picture of this character that the shield was important.

But mainly, in the end, his decision not to kill Crowley had less to do with Sam and more to do with Crowley himself. When Cas finally had his creator down on the muddy ground some way away from the house having used the shield to force him down there, he saw to his disgust that his creator, blood gurgling out of his mouth, was laughing at him.

“See?” he was saying. “You might have tried to settle down and play house for a minute there, but we both know what you are. And that is _bloody magnificent_ ,” Crowley said with a horrifying grin, and so Cas knocked him into what was probably a concussion. He didn’t want to give Crowley the satisfaction that killing him might have brought him in some twisted way.

As he came closer to the house, the side of which was still smoking slightly, Cas changed back into his dog form, because he could hear human voiced and he wasn’t certain how to proceed, but he was sure that the dog would probably be a better way of them seeing him then as Sam’s Captain America. The dog’s more focused hearing also meant that he didn’t need to move any closer to listen to the conversation going on.

“Look, you can’t do this, this had to have been some kind of – of freak accident or something…” Dean. That was Dean’s voice.

“Yeah, well, ‘freak accidents’ just seem to keep happening all too frequently around you, don’t they, Dean?”

That was the social worker, Cas registered numbly. He was there early. He was going to take Sam away.

“Look you – you really _can’t_ do this, alright? The only reason I wasn’t here is because I was getting a job – _I have a job now_ – and Sam – Sammy needs me!”

“Oh, so you think that _this_ is what he needs?”

Cas crept closer and saw that Henrickson was gesturing towards the smoking house. “No place safe to live in and paranoid that something’s trying to kill him? Just – just ask yourself this one thing for me, Dean – do you think your brother needs you? Or have you just convinced yourself that you need him so you’re not letting go?”

_No_ , Cas heard someone think loudly. After a moment he realised that the thought had come from Sam, who’d been quiet, up until now.

A few moments later they were both shouting for him – Sam must have run. Cas realised, as he sent out his own thoughts scanning for the boy. It still might not be safe for him out there…

Cas eventually found him sitting down on a tree stump about five minutes away from the house, his small face streaked with tears.

“Heya, Cas,” the boy said with some relief, but Cas was still too busy recoiling as Sam’s thoughts reached him before the boy was able to filter them. Because for just a moment there, Sam had thought with some venom at Cas that _this is all your fault_.

Sam’s face crumpled. “Cas – Cas that’s not what I mean – I didn’t mean that!”

But for just an instant Cas knew that he had, that he really had. And if Sam, Sam who had always seen the best in him, who always looked so hard to see the best in everyone, who forgave so easily, could think that, even for a moment, then what had to be running through Dean’s mind?

“Cas, I’m _sorry_ ,” Sam choked. “Look, could we… could we just grab Dean and run?”

Cas stood frozen staring up at the little boy through his eyes which saw far less colours than they did in his human form, and wondered. Last night this had been exactly what he’d suggested to Dean that they do.

But now he had seen again just what the consequences of staying with them could be and he wasn’t sure.

“Please, Cas. Please… please don’t leave again,” Sam said again, and Cas still didn’t change from his dog form, because he still didn’t know what to say. In fact he was concentrating so badly on figuring that out that he didn’t even notice the net propelling towards them until it was too late.

Something incredibly strong picked up the net.

Cas would recognise the stench of Abaddon’s mind anywhere, and immediately he understood. He’d gotten away from her. Nothing _ever_ got away from her. So as soon as Crowley had failed she’d jumped right in there to succeed.

Aloud, he heard her laugh, and it was a pleasant sound. “Well, that didn’t take long,” she said in her own language. Unlike the academics and spies Sam had met before, she wasn’t interested in any human dialects. “I’ll admit, I was expecting you to give me a little more of a challenge, sweetheart.”

Cas couldn’t change. It made it hard to breathe, hard to _think_ , knowing that. He was trapped. It was this net, it trapped him. All he could do was growl.

“And aren’t you happy with me? I even got you a snack to chow down on for the trip back.” She squinted at Sam, who started shouting and thrashing his fists, ignoring how badly he was shaking. “Hmm. He’s fiery as well as cute, ain’t he? Tell you what – if you don’t eat him and he survives the trip, I might keep him as a pet. A little souvenir.”

She laughed again, and threw the net over her deceptively delicate looking shoulders and tossed them into a metal compartment at the back of her small shuttle. “Hang on tight, boys!” she called into them, as Cas felt the net loosen. He was able to change again – although admittedly he couldn’t be anything any larger. So he became Sam again.

“What’s something that would break this? You won’t survive us leaving the atmosphere.”

“I won’t?” Sam’s voice had become higher in his panic, and it twisted something in Cas’ gut.

“No. What’s something strong that’s not any larger than this?”

“I – I don’t-”

“ _Think_ Sam.”

“I don’t _know_! Uh-”

Cas could feel the engines starting up. There was no time, there was no time…

“Cas, you leave.”

“What?”

Sam’s gaze had turned steely. “Get out. It’s ok. You can come back and get me. I know you can get out. Be… be a flea,” he said calmly, providing Cas with clear, detailed images. “If there’s _any_ space, you’ll be able to get through it.”

“Sam, I can’t just-”

“ _Please,_ Cas,” he said again, in the same tone as he’d asked Cas only a few moments ago to take him with him. “Just _go._ ”

So Cas went, and as the engines took off, his little body was flung into the wind.

*


	11. Abduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just thinking about that, if that were to really happen, if an alien were to come down and really abduct you, how terrifying and how earth-shattering would that be? Your whole world is just destroyed. God is destroyed. It's kind of a fascinating thing to think about.  
> Evan Peters

“Where did he go?” Henrickson was shouting, as though Dean was supposed to know the answer.

Dean gave a small dry laugh, his eyes continuing to get drawn back to the wrecked house, the damaged couch visible from the outside now. Hadn’t he been complaining about this place only the other day and how he wanted to sell it? No danger of that now – no one would want to buy this place now…

“You think I know? Seriously, man, what kind of fucking social worker are you? Tossing a very freaked out little kid into the back of a car with no fucking child locks after telling him that you’re about to take him away forever?” Dean coughed out another laugh. “Fucking _stellar_ planning.”

“I wasn’t exactly expecting to find the situation this grave,” Henrickson snapped, his eyes continuing to scan the tree line. “Sam!” he bellowed again, and started walking off.

At a loss for what else to do, Dean joined in and started walking in the opposite direction from the social worker.

What a mess, what a fucking _mess…_

Letting his feet carry him wherever they thought was best, Dean started wandering through the weird ‘woods’ his Mom had been responsible for creating around their home, every now and then placing a hand over a tree to steady himself. He’d been so much smaller when these trees had made up his and Benny’s kingdom, their Sherwood Forest, their Rivendell…

A sound like a giant engine starting up blasted Dean out of his daydream and he started to run. If this was the aliens who’d gone and broken his Mom’s favourite vase and was making the social worker take his brother away, then Dean was gonna… well he was gonna do _something_ anyway…

But when he reached the source of the noise all Dean had the chance to do was cover his face with his arms as the wind swirled around him. Dean dropped to the ground, curling himself into a ball, really feeling like a child again because the world had just gotten so damn _big_ all of a sudden…

He didn’t even notice the small whimpering noises he was making until the noise from the ship had gone and all he could hear was himself. Because he was alone again.

Or maybe not.

The moment Dean felt the hand on his back he whipped around, jumping to his feet, ready to snap at Henrickson, kill aliens, whatever. But it was Cas, and Dean froze as he stared into those otherworldly eyes that had never looked so sad, so unsure.

So lost.

“Cas – Cas where’s Sam?”

Cas’ face gave an involuntary-looking twitch.

“No, _no_. He wasn’t on that fucking spaceship – they wouldn’t have taken a _kid_ – _you_ wouldn’t have _let_ them.”

Cas’ lips, which were bleeding, Dean now noticed, seemed to be trying to form words but it was almost as though they’d forgotten how.

Dean felt his blood run cold. Because it was Sam. They couldn’t have taken Sam. Anything could happen, but he couldn’t have lost Sam. His parents were dead, his house was fucked, and Sam was probably getting taken away from him anyway. But this – no, this couldn’t be. This wasn’t something Dean could accept.

But he could see from Cas’ face that it was happening whether he could accept it or not. And Dean didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know what to think, so he let his fists start thinking for him and pummel into the alien’s face. Cas’ face. Cas, who could be anything, who could kill him if he chose, was letting him turn his face into even more of a bloodied pulp.

“This. Is. All. _Your. Fucking. Fault,”_ Dean yelled between blows. “They wouldn’t have even _come_ here if you hadn’t just flown off into the desert and _left us the hell alone_.”

“Yes,” Cas agreed hoarsely as Dean stopped for a breath, letting Cas slump to the ground on his knees. God, that face was such a mess…

“You should believe that. It’s true, Dean. This is not your fault, it _is_ mine. _I_ put you and Sam in danger.” His beaten face still shaking, Cas raised his head. “Stop blaming yourself, Dean. You couldn’t have stopped this.”

The shapeshifting, right now Dean felt like that was far easier to deal with than the mindreading. It was… fucking horrible having someone who understood every thought running through your head and would kneel there parroting it back at you. And before he knew it, Dean could feel the tears wetting his own face. Wiping at them fiercely, Dean pointed an angry finger down at Cas, hearing his Dad’s gruff reminder that apologies only ever made a man look weak echoing through his head, and said, his voice shaking, “So how do we get him back?”

“Oh, I don’t think anyone’ll be going to get _anything_ back anytime soon there, sunshine,” a voice behind them said, and suddenly Cas was surrounded by this bright green glowing light, his mouth frozen in what looked like a scream.

“Cas!” Dean shouted, but when he got no immediate response, he turned on Cas’ attacker. “You sonofabitch, you let him go _now_.”

“Oh, believe me darling, I’m doing him a lot less damage than you were managing there,” he said with a weary smile. “I’ve just frozen your – Cas, is it now? Charming – into the one form. Finally got this thing working – I think it was when he threw me out of your house actually, I think all it needed all along was a good sharp hit… I just don’t want him flying off or frying us to death before I get a chance to have a proper chat with him.”

With a heaving breath in, Cas showed himself able to move again. “I let you live once,” he snarled, and rushed towards the figure with the gaping line of shark teeth on the one side of his mouth.

“Easy now,” the alien said, raising what had to be some kind of gun and pointing it at Dean. Instantly Cas stopped moving, just like Dean had known he would. Which was a weird thing to be so sure about – the guy certainly had no reason to want Dean alive.

“ _What did I tell you_ about _threatening humans,_ Crowley?” A woman’s voice behind them growled. Dean turned around slowly, to see Ms Tran again. Of fucking course.

“Now lower that weapon.”

“Oh, and you have the Council backing you up on that, do you?”

“No,” she said sweetly, and pointed her own gun at him. “Just this.”

Crowley’s shoulders slumped as he slowly started to lower his gun. “Betrayed,” he huffed.

“Aw, c’mon, y’know we never liked you Crowley,” Ms Tran’s son said, coming out of the bushes behind her and waving slightly at Cas, who didn’t smile.

His mother meanwhile ignored Cas entirely and looked right at Dean. “Now. Where’s your brother? Is he safe?”

“Is he-” Dean’s mouth hung open slightly. Fucking weird-ass aliens. “No, he’s not fucking _safe_ – your alien buddies just came down and fucking _abducted_ him. So why don’t _you_ tell me where he is?”

Ms Tran gasped and turned to her son. “You let Naomi send out Abaddon already?”

“You think I _let_ Naomi do anything? I do not have that kinda power-”

“Well maybe if you’d just worked a little harder in –”

“Hey!” Dean shouted. “Can you get him back or can’t you?”

Ms Tran sighed and looked up at him with tears shining slightly in her eyes. “No. If Abaddon has him… as soon as she’s gained the clearance to do so she’ll have left the atmosphere and then she has much greater authority than we do. And Sam was only one human – although a very special one, I’m sure,” she said, her voice softer than Dean had ever heard it.

“No,” he snarled, as the tears pricking at his eyes threatened to start falling.

_Sam was only one human…_

“No,” he choked again. “You have to do _something_. You people made this mess – you can’t just – you can’t -” He looked over at Cas, whose eyes were narrowed in concentration. “Cas, _please_. It’s _Sam.”_

Almost imperceptively, the alien nodded. Then in one swift movement with his left he knocked Crowley to the ground where he held him down with his foot, and in an instant the Trans’ guns were trained on him instead.

“You will let me free again,” he stated slowly, staring unblinkingly at Crowley’s infuriated face. “And then you will help me save my family.”

Crowley coughed out a laugh. “ _Family_? You don’t _have_ one!”

Cas let his gaze slide to Dean, who nodded tearfully at him. Cas smiled slightly then and looked back to Crowley. “Family,” he said firmly as he increased the pressure of his foot, “ _don’t_ end in blood.”

“We could fix up our shuttle, and he could come at Abaddon from the other direction, force a landing maybe,” Ms Tran’s son said thoughtfully, with a small shrug. “If she’s still not left the atmosphere then we might still have some time.”

“You’re right,” his Mom said, nodding after a beat, and despite himself, Dean felt his hopes start to rise. “If the council has a problem then they’ll just have to deal with me.”

Still flat on the ground under Cas’ foot, Crowley raised an eyebrow in disdain. “And exactly why should I turn this one back to how he was?”

“Because your unpleasant exterior masks a bleeding heart,” Ms Tran informed him. “And because I’ll shoot you if you don’t.”

“Oh. Well then.”

*

Sam wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the metal cage-pod-thing. He thought he might have almost broken his neck a few times, from the way the shuttle kept on rocking. It would probably be an easier way to die, Sam found himself thinking with rising panic. He had never liked small spaces, feeling caged.

He was going to die up here – ironically, by getting to go into space like he’d always wanted – without ever getting to see Dean or anyone else ever again…

The metal beneath him was ripped away with a loud drilling noise – and then Sam was falling, and falling couldn’t be such a bad way of dying…

Sam only started to get that he _wasn’t_ about to die when he felt his brother’s arms close around him, catching him.

“Dean! You’re – we’re – we’re _flying._ ”

“Don’t remind me, _please_ ,” Dean said sharply, his chattering teeth made more obvious by his wide-mouthed grin.

As Dean got Sam gently settled in front of him on the dragon’s back, Sam hugged at the warm scales gratefully. “You came back,” he whispered, knowing that Cas would be able to hear him.

In answer, the black dragon turned his head and stared at Sam with those wonderful blue eyes, before nodding his head at Dean, making Dean tighten his elbows’ grip around Sam’s waist a little tighter. Feeling a little more confident, Sam risked a look around him, and a look down. Wow, they really were high up – they were above the _clouds_ now.

And above them…

The spaceship that had tried to take him away, speeding away along through the sky, and it was being _shot at_ by another smaller ship.

“Who’s in there?”

“Your principal and the other douchebag aliens,” Dean offered in shaky explanation.

“Ok, uh – why?”

“Turns out Ms Tran likes you or something. Despite, y’know, the whole suspending you thing. She’s uh… she’s something. Y’know. For an alien.”

Underneath them, Cas’ scales bobbed up in what might have been a snort of laughter.

“Yeah, well, you don’t count. You’re _family_ or whatever now,” Dean shouted.

Above the, there was a louder blast of laser fire. And as Sam looked up, he saw that it was directed towards Ms Tran’s ship.

“They’re in trouble,” Sam noted, feeling growing alarm.

“Aw, they can handle themselves, Sammy…”

“We need to help them!”

Sam wasn’t imagining it, Cas definitely seemed to increase the speed of his descent at Sam’s words.

“Cas, you don’t owe them shit, y’hear me?” Dean warned. “ _Cas!_ ”

But Cas was still dropping.

“At least let me help if you’re gonna go attacking the thing trying to _kill_ you,” Dean shouted angrily. But his protests did no good - a few moments later they were back on the ground again – in a field that looked like it was probably not far from home, Sam guessed – and Cas was human again, the moment they’d both slid down off his back.

Dean was still shaking violently from the flight when he marched over to Cas and shouted, “right, we just got you safe, now don’t you _dare –_ ”

And then Cas cut Dean off by kissing him. It would be a very movie star kiss, Sam thought, if more movie kisses were carried out by two guys.

Sam wasn’t sure if he was supposed to look away or start clapping or something.

“I’m coming back,” Cas said when he finally released Dean’s jacked from his grip and looked them both in the eye in turn. And then his gaze lingered on Sam as he continued with, “this is what’s _right_ ,” and became a dragon again.

But before he could take off, Dean shouted, “Wait!” and screwed up his face, obviously trying to think of something furiously. Then Cas obediently changed himself and they weren’t beneath Toothless, who’d just been large enough to carry the two of them easily, but they were instead standing in the long shadow of the red Smaug the Magnificent, Sam realised, his eyes going wide. Cas huffed out his approval, heating the air with the smoke that produced, and took off into the air again.

*

Kevin supposed that if he was going to die, he was glad he’d get the chance to tell his Mom he loved her, but he really did wish he’d taken that chance back on the Council ship and just asked out Channing, that girl in the tech support room. Now Kevin’s own little ship was barely keeping itself in the air anymore, but his Mom was insisting that they had to keep it flying, because if they didn’t then Abaddon would take her ship down and start attacking the humans. She’d sounded really sincere and principled when she’d said it but now Kevin wondered if it didn’t have more to do with the stubborn rage she was holding for Abaddon.

“Fire again!” she screamed at Crowley.

“We’re almost out of ammo,” Kevin heard Crowley tell her dryly as Kevin meanwhile tried desperately to continue dodging Abaddon’s new batch of missiles. “What do you expect us to do then?”

“I _expect_ , Crowley, that _this_ time you’re going to actually succeed in blowing her out of the sky!”

“This isn’t _my_ fault-”

“The only reason we’re even _here_ is your fault-”

“Shut up!” Kevin yelled at both of them without looking around. “I think the creature’s come back to help us,” he breathed in relief as he watched the great scaled beast flap up towards them, defying all physical laws that Kevin was aware of.

“See!” Crowley said, rushing over to stand by the window. “I _am_ helping!”

“That doesn’t make all of this any less your fault,” Linda pointed out sourly, before they all went quiet, watching in amazement as the creature opened its maw wide… and breathed out flame.

Now that _definitely_ didn’t make any sense.

Kevin and his Mom remained silent, but Crowley giggled in unrepressed glee as the fire the creature breathed out engulfed Abaddon’s ship. But though the ship began quickly to descend, it was still left able to shoot, they found, as they watched one of Abaddon’s missiles let out once more, and hit the weak spot on the creature’s belly. They listened to it roar out in pain  and keen wordlessly as they started the descent of their own ship. This had gone on too long now for them to not know how it was going to end.

“He heals quickly,” Crowley said, and for once Kevin was disappointed not to hear that normal layer of arrogance smothering the scientist’s words.

Kevin continued to keep his focus on where he was taking the plane, but still it was difficult to look away from the sight of that creature falling down through the clouds, its wings outstretched and billowing.

*

“ _Castiel_ ,” Dean shouted and started to running towards the spot where it looked like Cas was falling down towards. Further away from them he could hear the enemy ship crashing down, but he didn’t care about that.

Smaug-Cas had maybe fallen a good half-mile away from them but Dean could hear Sam keeping up not far behind him the whole way over there. By the time they reached Cas, he was human again, making him much harder to find. The shirt he was wearing – how _did_ he ever stay clothed between forms anyway? Dean wondered in the midst of his hysteria at seeing Cas look so _broken_ – was soaked with blood all down its front, and he seemed to be struggling into force himself to sit up.

“No fucking way – you stay down,” Dean ordered him harshly as he skidded down beside him on his knees and let Cas’ head rest on him. “Can’t you just – just change into something healthy?”

Cas managed to cough up a smile, along with some blood. “I don’t think… I can make it work like that,” he said slowly, before starting to cough again. “Don’t worry… I should heal fast anyway.”

Sitting down so that he faced Cas, Sam looked the alien earnestly in the eye. “You saved me,” he said quietly, in a voice dripping with reverence. “Thank you. You… you didn’t need to. You’re a hero, Cas.”

Cas gifted Sam with another small smile. “I think that your brother would agree with me, Sam, when I say that nothing is worth losing you.”

As soon as he watched his brother start to tear up, Dean let out a groan, pushing back the guilt for ever doubting that Cas would put Sam first to the back of his head. “Oh, don’t _start_ , Dean said, extracting one hand that had been helping to support Cas’ back to wipe weakly at his own eyes. “Enough with the deathbed speeches crap.”

“I really think I am healing, Dean. This really shouldn’t have anything to do with death, and we don’t have a bed, here.”

“Aw, shut up.”

*

Abaddon managed to find Naomi almost the moment she landed. Things had been growing _ridiculous_ back home politically, and it seemed that the best response was to tackle the issue herself and personally take the creature which had set such a stir throughout the universe into her own protective custody – and effectively this time.

And it appeared that she had, as usual, made _exactly_ the right decision.

“It tried to set me on _fire_ , High Councilwoman,” Abaddon continued to rage, the fiery mane of her “guise” indeed looking singed and seemed in parts to be smoking. “That… that _thing_ is uncontrollable and must be put down – taking it alive will not work. It already _seduced_ your pathetic agent here over to its side in only one conversation.”

“I don’t think I was _seduced_ ,” Linda Tran said sternly.

“I might have been,” Crowley added, to nobody’s interest.

“You started firing on me!”

“You _kidnapped_ a _child_ who wasn’t even meant to know we were _here._ ”

“Well I wasn’t the one who allowed him to get involved…”

“ _Allowed_?”

“Ladies,” Naomi snapped, before focusing on Abaddon, fighting the urge to start rubbing blearily at her forehead. She detested these ‘guises. “Captain, if these allegations indeed prove to be true then you will undergo a suspension, and perhaps even a demotion, depending on the severity of what can be proved. And there will be a full enquiry of _everyone_ ’s actions here today,” she continued before Linda had the chance to say anything.

Crowley coughed from behind the two women. “And, uh, I will certainly try my best to help you recover the facts, Ma’am.”

Naomi rolled her eyes. “The only way you’ll be getting back on my control ship, Crowley, is in chains. You failed in the basic objective I set for you, but I will allow you to take your promised freedom here if it suits you and you stay hidden,” she added begrudgingly, certain that this was something she could end up regretting.

“You _all_ failed,” she reiterated. “Now where _is_ the creature?”

“We’ve located it, Ma’am,” Samandriel piped up. “It shouldn’t take us long to reach it on foot.”

“He,” said a voice behind her. Naomi turned. Ah yes… Kevin, she remembered eventually.

“What?”

“ _He_ ,” he repeated. “I think it’s a he.”

“Well that’s hardly of import right now,” Naomi sniffed, though she couldn’t help but wonder. Some time had passed since she had first met Crowley’s strange creation. Could it have formed some semblance of identity for itself since then?

“Well, let’s go and get _him_ then,” Naomi sighed. “Did any of you at least find a successful means of containing it?”

“Oh, I might have managed something…” Crowley started, his face the practiced picture of nonchalance. “But it’ll cost-”

“…you any freedom I might have been inclined to allow you if you keep it from me. Now hand it over.”

Glaring at her with a look of pure malice, the scientist placed into her waiting hands a small firing weapon. “Just aim and fire and he’ll be stuck in the one form. So maybe try waiting until he’s _not_ that giant flying thing?”

Rolling her eyes, Naomi clasped her fist around the tiny gun and started to march, her team at her heels.

*

As soon as Cas felt as though he might be strong enough to move, he sat up, raising himself from the comfort of Dean’s lap where Dean had, almost absently, been starting to stroke at his hair.

“I think I might be able to stand in a moment,” Cas asserted, wondering as he said it whether it was actually true, whether he would ever be capable of standing on only two legs again.

But that might have had more to do with the melodrama of his new family rubbing off on him.

“And uh… your, your face is looking better too,” Dean supplied, locking eyes with Cas. And even if he couldn’t yet say the words aloud, Cas could hear Dean’s heartfelt apology as loudly as though he’d screamed it, hearing as well Dean’s fervent hope that Sam would never have to find out.

Cas nodded, even as he caught a glimpse from the locked box of Dean’s mind of how angry, how sometimes-aggressive he had seen his father become, but that had almost always been under the influence of a great deal of alcohol. Dean had been sober when he’d attacked Cas.

But it was difficult not to forgive when you understood so completely.

“The scars are healing fast,” Cas assured him, laying a hand on Dean’s, and had the satisfaction of watching Dean’s eyes slide into relief.

“Ok,” Dean said, and looked around – they were fairly close to a main road from here. “Maybe Charlie’d come and pick us up if I called her. Or, uh, Jo - she should still be in town-”

“There’s a car there!” Sam shouted, getting to his feet and pointing at the car careering off the road towards them. “Maybe it’ll give us a ride!”

“Uh, Sam…” Dean started, cautiously, as Cas’ jaw hardened. He’d recognised the car too.

Henrickson got out of the car and started marching through the grass towards them with a face that promised to rain down vengeance.

“So,” Henrickson said as he stood above them, hands on his hips. “Where did the _dragons_ go?”

Dean glanced at Cas, then up at Sam, who shrugged helplessly, before he looked back up at the social worker. “I don’t have a good explanation.”

“Huh. Well why don’t you get started with explaining, oh, I don’t know, what was going on up there in the sky with the big-ass _spaceships,_ hmm?”

Cas squinted up at him. This man was… difficult to read. Someone had coached him well in how to discipline his thoughts. But…

“You’re not surprised.”

“What?”

Shakily, and with Dean supporting his back, Cas got to his feet and looked the man straight in the eyes. “You’re not surprised, because this is what you really came here to see, isn’t it?”

Henrickson smacked a hand to his head and growled in frustration. “I don’t believe this – you’re one of them, aren’t you?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Christ, you probably _are_ the dragons – aren’t you? Christ. Don’t _do_ that again! People _saw_. You guys _know_ that’s against the rules – c’mon! And you,” he shouted pointing a finger at Dean, “You knew this whole time, didn’t you!”

“ _I_ knew? _You’re_ supposed to be our fucking _social worker!_ ”

“I _am_. I’m just also… other things,” Henrickson finished awkwardly with a heavy sigh,  as though at that moment he would prefer that the ‘other things’ would go away and leave him alone.

Dean turned to Sam, his face incredulous, “Are you like a magnet for these people?”

Sam shrugged, before his eyes were caught behind them. “Cas…” he said shakily. “Is that, _them_?”

There was indeed what seemed like a whole gang of aliens in their various ‘guises walking over towards them.

“Some of them don’t even look _real_ ,” Henrickson scoffed as he walked forward to squint at them. “God, you guys are letting your standards drop.” He sighed heavily and glanced back at Cas. “Alright, Cas, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Right. Gimme the sparknotes here.”

“They are all here to kill or capture me. I would like to avoid that,” Cas told him immediately, recognising that this was a man who would appreciate his candour.

“That what you want too, Sam?”

Sam nodded, blinking tears out of his eyes, as his brother scrunched his own in frustration. “What, don’t I get a say?”

Henrickson shrugged and looked back at the oncoming aliens, the High Councilwoman striding at the head of them, her ‘guise a woman in a neat business suit.

“You’re an adult. Sam’s the one whose safety I need to be concerned with here.”

“Cas wouldn’t hurt any of us,” Sam stated confidently. “It’s _her_ who tried to abduct me. Then Dean and Cas came and rescued me,” he said, pointing at Abaddon and her frazzled hair. Like Crowley’s ‘guise had, hers had also started… slipping.

“That makes them pretty good guardians though, huh Victor? I mean Dean’s _terrified_ of flying and he just came up and got me like -”

“We’ll talk that part through in a minute, Sam,” Henrickson said as he continued to hold eye contact with the Councilwoman, who was very close to them now. The man was worried, Cas understood. But that certainly didn’t mean that this was his first experience of the Council’s people, and Cas reluctantly allowed himself to trust that Henrickson was actually as capable as he thought he was. Certainly when Naomi was standing right in front of him at last, he appeared confident.

“High Councilwoman, is it?”

She stared blankly at him and motioned for a younger man, decked out like a fast food worker, to step forwards. He cleared his throat a few times before attempting English. “I’m Samandriel, I am happy to translate for you today, Mr -”

“Henrickson. And why don’t I have a chat with Linda instead?”

Gaping awkwardly, Samandriel allowed himself to be pushed back by the formidable Ms Tran.

“Victor,” she said briskly, clearly about to move on to say something else, when Cas heard the quick change in the Councilwoman’s thoughts and made to move – but he was already too late, and suddenly the painful green light was all around him again.

When he eventually heaved in a breath, feeling his sense return to him where he crouched on all floors on the grass, Dean and Sam were touching at his back in concern, and in front of him Henrickson had a gun out and trained at the councilwoman, with three more aimed at him.

“Alright, what the hell was that?” Henrickson was yelling.

“Are you ok, Cas?” Sam whispered to him.

Cas managed to nod, before using his rage to power him into standing again, and glaring at Naomi. And it struck him then that neither she or the Winchesters, or Crowley or _anyone_ would _ever_ be fully capable of understanding what it was she had taken from him.

All he’d ever known was the ability to change, as quick as a thought, to escape into something new, to remain ethereal and in some ways untouchable. Now panic filled him as surely as it had filled Sam, confined in Abaddon’s ship. He felt… crippled, disabled, because half of the abilities that had made him _him_ had now been taken from him.

But this trauma was reversible.

“Reverse it,” Cas growled, in Naomi’s own language.

“No,” she clipped. “You’re not such a danger in this form. Now we can… talk.”

Cas was terrified that he didn’t feel much of _anything_ trapped in this one form.

Henrickson glanced between them both, unable to understand the words they were speaking. “Alright, what’s it gonna take for you people to fly off again. This is already getting over and above the kind of freedom we agreed to allow you here.”

“We can leave immediately. But we’ll need our prisoner back, Victor,” Linda said mildly. “A prisoner still capable of being a danger to all the people here. Surely you understand that our jurisdiction applies here.”

“Alright, this might be Kansas, but it sure as hell ain’t bleeding now. You can’t just go running across borders after your prisoners and _our_ citizens.”

 _“Is_ he a citizen?” Linda asked, looking a little confused.

“Uh…” Dean spoke up, moving from behind Cas. “Well… I dunno about _citizen_ , but uh, _I_ am, and I bought him from the shelter a few days ago. Got a certificate to prove it too,” he added, clearly warming to his point. “Point is, he’s mine, the law says so, so you can’t have him.”

Cas wasn’t sure why he found that claim of ownership, which once would have felt as chaffing as the effects of Crowley’s gun on him, now sent a small… thrill through him, now that he heard them coming from Dean’s mouth, all the while knowing that Dean didn’t really mean them.

At least, not in the way he was saying them.

And the fact that it was Dean, who a few days ago had _needed_ to believe that his race was alone in the universe, who was now standing up against a whole official group of aliens that was so amusing and made Cas feel oddly proud.

Henrickson did not seem to share his fond feelings. “Not helping me with the whole slavery metaphor here, Dean…”

Dean coughed. “Sorry.”

“Point is, as her appointed watcher,” Henrickson said, gesturing at Linda with his gun, “from _my_ government, I’m already in enough trouble for letting this whole lightshow blow up under my nose like that. So gimme a break, and just clear the hell out already. He’s just a guy, and he’s our problem now.”

Crowley snorted. “He isn’t _just_ anything, _”_ he started but Linda cut him off.

“Yes. He is.”

“Alright then. Seems like you did what you came here to do. Now clear off of our planet already, _please.”_

Even as that statement needed a lot of explanation on Linda’s part, and caused a lot of bickering through Naomi’s group, that seemed to be that, Cas realised slowly, with some relief. But still…

“Is there no way I could have my abilities returned to me again?” Cas asked Naomi directly, and she looked back at him thoughtfully. “No. Not if you truly choose to remain here.” She tilted her head slightly. “I suppose that if you returned with us, and we agreed to hold another trial for you, if you were successful, you might be granted them in return for good behaviour, and work for us which we were able to monitor. You have that choice.”

“Then I have already chosen,” Cas told her, and looked down at Sam with a small smile, while the boy started hugging his waist enthusiastically, not understanding what Cas had just said, but knowing that he wasn’t going anywhere. And then Cas looked over at Dean, who, now that Cas seemed well again, was unsure of how to act around him.

“I think it’s over, Dean,” Cas said quietly to him, and Dean nodded. Now, Cas wondered, what would they be starting?

*


	12. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The search [for extra-terrestrial life] is a failure until that moment when it suddenly becomes a success” – Seth Shostak

Opening night of ‘live music Saturday’s’ at Chuck’s was a full house. Looking around at his audience, Dean couldn’t help feeling some apprehension, not just over the show he was about to start, but at every Saturday to follow. Emotional as it was – because alright, it was emotional, or whatever – looking around seeing that half the faces out there were those of his nearest and dearest, it was also going to make it more than a little interesting finding out who would actually be turning up every night to follow. But tonight it was packed, and Chuck and his wife Becky, who’d been _incredibly_ enthusiastic about all the new expansions, were thrilled.

Dean wasn’t sure if it was worse or better to be performing in front of literally everyone he knew. Certainly with some people, like Charlie, Garth, Ellen and Missouri, he knew that they were there to support him whatever he ended up sounding like; with people like Victor, who mainly seemed to have turned up out of curiosity, or Rufus, whose presence was one of several small peace offerings they’d been making for each other lately, Dean was more than a little nervous. But as he looked down at Jo making Sam laugh, Dean remembered how glad he was they’d all made it.

Sam had actually brought people of his own – the kid had _friends_ again. Which meant that there was more than one small child being snuck into the bar now, to Chuck’s increasing anxiety. Little Jess was looking especially sweet – she kept swinging her legs back and forth on the seat that was far too large for her, staring wide-eyed up at the stage.

So at least the ‘friends’ part of Sam’s wish had ended up coming true, Dean thought, and risked a glance down at Cas before starting up his strumming. Their ‘guardian angel’ would always rankle at the ‘guardians’ imposed on him in turn, in the form of Linda Tran and Henrickson, who really had done his best to cover for them for the government over what really went on (he’d spun them some pretty impressive sounding stories that would have had Mary Winchester narrowing her eyes as she read every version of them), but they’d started becoming a lot more like family than anything else now. Kinda like Sam’s new kooky aunt and uncle.

Hell, a weird uncle was exactly what everyone _thought_ that Crowley was to them, ever since he’d turned up on their doorstep, to their still basically destroyed home, and demanded somewhere to stay in return for rebuilding it bigger and better for them. Not that their definitions of ‘better’ always matched up. Dean and Cas figured he was mainly there out of curiosity to see how Cas turned out, but they did need to keep a firm eye on him to make sure he wasn’t building artificial intelligence into their home. Meanwhile, Sam had almost no reservations about constantly being around his ‘workshop’, bugging him about Roswell, and cloning, and how he’d figured out shapeshifting. Crowley didn’t always answer, or answer _nicely_ at least, but he seemed to share more with Sam than he did with any of the rest of them.

The kid really could bounce. In his last report on them, Victor said that being in a stable family environment again had worked wonders for his mental health, but he’d winked as he said it, being one of the very few who knew about the nature of Dean and Cas’ still technically fake relationship.

Well, not technically fake. _Actually_ fake. Right.

They still only ever saved their stolen kisses and other obvious appreciations of each other to the public sphere, and when they came home they didn’t talk about it, and kept all their attention to looking after Sam.

It wasn’t that Dean had lost interest. Hell, some mornings when Cas got out of the shower, having used up all the hot water already more often than not, and he’d come out with his back muscles gleaming from the steam and his face all intense from spending too much time in his own head… Well, Dean knew he was thinking about how much _less_ he had to feel trapped there with them, and he knew that Cas could hear him thinking it, and wasn’t correcting him, and it was all he could do not to reach out to him, try to give him some kind of comfort like he had that day in the field, try and take his breath away like he had that day in the kitchen…

But the memory of Castiel-as-Bela rejecting him still stung, still haunted him.

And that was _before_ he’d turned the guy’s face into… well.

But after the cheers died down and Dean started to sing, he directed his words at Cas, and he knew that Cas would know he wasn’t looking at him out of any dedication to their ‘fake boyfriends’ game.

But then Dean had always loved that about being on the stage. He was exposing himself completely – or at least, that’s how it felt - and it was making people _happy_.

“Ooh, ooh child, things are gonna get easier,” Dean started, knowing his voice had never had anything on his guitar playing but figuring that what the hell, he was here, people were smiling, and he was getting _paid_ to be there too. So he might as well enjoy himself while it was lasting.

Tomorrow he’d remember about everything he needed to worry about, both the mundane and the, well, unique.

But tonight he was on top of the friggin’ world.

*

“Frank offered me a job again.”

“That’s great, Cas!” Sam called out a little sleepily from where he was lying in the back of the car as Dean twitched his mouth into a smile.

“Well, maybe you should take it. I mean, Chuck’s mostly booking me up for the nights – between us we could probably figure it out and look after Sam alright.”

“I guess.”

“But, dude, you could be anything. Like, if you ever wanna go and get a _career_ or something-”

“I like the sound of shop work. Unless… unless you would like me to go?” Dean didn’t, Cas was almost certain of that from what he could hear from his mind, but he’d learned it was polite to ask, even if you were only almost sure what someone’s response would be.

“No,” the brothers shouted together sternly, before Sam laughed to himself and laid his head back on the car window. Cas smiled, trying to block out the cloud of Dean’s very confused thoughts. He hadn’t been _lying_ when he’d said he wanted Cas to stay, but that didn’t mean he knew how to behave around Cas now that he was living with him.

Cas was glad he had this freedom left to him at least, the ability to skim over the surfaces of minds. It allowed him to feel not entirely bound, not entirely broken.

Sam seemed to regain his energy immediately after the car stopped. “I’m just going downstairs for a minute!”

“Don’t let him take any more blood samples!” Cas called after the boy. He preferred to avoid his creator as much as possible, but if need be he would confront him and force him out if he ever felt Sam, or Dean’s safety to be at risk.

Dean started laughing slightly at the expression on Cas’ face. “I think Sammy can hold his own. He just takes to mentioning you whenever the guy’s annoying him.”

“Not that I’m as intimidating as I used to be.”

“Sure, but that doesn’t mean _he’s_ not still scared,” Dean pointed out, and Cas felt warmth spread through him at the distinct pride he heard behind Dean’s words.

“So, uh, did you like it?” Dean asked after they were inside and he’s thrown his car keys down on the kitchen side.

“Why is my opinion significant for you? I have far less experience in music than your peers.”

“Yeah, but you’re… you. And that’s… significant,” Dean managed stiltedly as he opened the fridge door, assumedly to avoid looking Cas in the eye.

“Well then, for what it’s worth I enjoyed it very much.”

Dean smiled, and as the fridge door lit up his features Cas was reminded that they hadn’t switched on any lights yet.

“Beer?”

“…alright.” Cas had been slightly distrustful of the substance ever since the night he’d first gotten to meet Dean’s friends. Even now, Benny still regarded Cas with suspicion, and Cas wondered how much Garth had managed to deduce for himself.

But now Dean  was offering, trusting that he could handle it. And it wasn’t exactly often that they got a chance to just be alone together, and it seemed sometimes that Dean was near incapable of doing that with _anyone_ without alcohol, or sometimes coffee – without some kind of _reason_ for it.

“What’s troubling you?” Cas asked, as Dean handed him an open bottle. For a moment as Dean froze slightly their fingers brushed lightly against the bottle and Cas almost gasped at the sheer _energy_ he was able to feel through that modest connection. But then Dean pulled his hand away.

“Nothing,” Dean insisted.

Cas looked at him, half in apology, as he waited for Dean to remember how much Cas would be able to see even _without_ an explanation from Dean.

“It’s just… we’re lucky to have you, man,” Dean huffed out. “And, uh, I’m sorry you like got your wings clipped off. I’m not sure I’m – that _we’re_ – worth it. And hell, even now, _everyone_ should want to employ you, you could be _anywhere-_ ”

“But I’d rather be here,” Cas told him simply.

“Alright then, sure. I guess I just don’t get… _why_.”

Cas shrugged. “When I was no-one with everything, Sam gave me a name and called me his family. He made me understand what it meant to do something for no better reason than because it was right.”

Dean shoulders slumped slightly. “Right. Yeah. Sammy’s… he’s something special alright.”

But Cas wanted to believe in the possibilities, the almost-crushed hopes he could see dancing around the fringes of Dean’s mind, so he took a step forward. “Yes. Sam is special. And he also has a brother.”

“Oh yeah?” Dean asked, eyebrows quirking up as his grip on the kitchen counter tightened.

“Yes,” Cas said gravely. “Objectively, he’s one of the most beautiful specimens of the human species that I’ve so far come across.”

A blush began spreading like wildfire over Dean’s freckled cheeks. “ _Beautiful_ , huh?”

“Mmm,” Cas told him, as he moved in closer towards him again. “Very much so. And more than any other human I’ve ever met, his thoughts confuse me. Because he cares so much, but unlike Sam, he’s not always so certain of what to do about that. He worries it would be seen as a weakness to either give too much, to not give enough.”

Dean licked at his lower lip and met Cas’ eyes. “Cas, look-”

“You see,” Cas continues, careful to pronounce each word very carefully, “I admire this man, and greatly. I think he’s incredible. However-”

The fear growing in Dean’s eyes was almost something that Cas wanted to draw out and savour. Almost.

“However, I don’t yet understand what it is he wants.”

And it was everything Cas loved about him, everything he’d just been extolling to see all those emotions broiling there in Dean’s eyes, some of which Cas didn’t even feel confident in naming, before the man pounced, cupping Cas’ chin gently, but pushing his body up against him in a way that was insistent and anything but gentle.

“I think I know what I want,” Dean told him, after dragging Cas’ lower lip back with him as he moved slowly away, like he couldn’t bear to release Cas entirely even for a moment. “And it mainly involves us being in a bed together _right now_ and losing our clothes already. You cool with that?”

Cas knew that part of Dean’s breathlessness was coming from his continued fear that Cas would leave again and it made something in his heart twist. “I’m cool with that,” Cas confirmed, and watched Dean’s face transform to make way for the largest and dopiest grin Cas had ever seen on his face.

“But, uh, shouldn’t we get Sam to bed and away from Crowley first?”

Dean heaved out a long groan. “Why are you so much better at being a human than I am.”

“Oh I’m not,” Cas corrected him mildly as he lightly ran his fingers down Dean’s waist. “But I’m starting to understand that I’m very good at being me.”

*

Sam noticed the different way Dean and Cas had been looking at each other, the disgustingly transparent way his brother had actually been _pawing_ at Cas’ ass before they put him to bed. But annoying as he found it, Sam was glad to see it anyway – he felt like they might have all finally _won_ at something. So before he went to sleep he knelt down on his bed and opened up his curtains wide and stared up at the sky. If there’d been any poetic justice in the world, he would have been able to see the stars, but as it was the sky was cloudy – but Sam didn’t mind.

“Hey,” he started, clasping his hands together awkwardly. “Me again. I just, uh… I just wanted to say… thanks. Things got kinda hairy for a bit, but we got through it – and I don’t think any of us are lonely anymore. Our family doesn’t feel so broken, now.” He smiled up at where he knew the stars were hiding.

“I mean, I still miss Mom, and Dad. But I think… we’ve made something new. And that doesn’t make us bad people. So, uh, over and out.”

*

After Dean had checked in on Sam one more time, he found Cas waiting on his bed for him, luing on his back, still fully dressed and staring up at the ceiling. Well. Dean said _his_ bed, but it wasn’t really always. Sometimes Sam’s nightmares got bad and he came in to join him, usually trying to pretend it was about something else, and sometimes, over the last few times, it had been all of theirs. When they first got home after Cas had crashed down into that field they still hadn’t got the guest bed set up, and no one had talked about getting around to it – they’d all just piled in there together, listening to the sound of the others’ breathing in, breathing out. And after Sam had gone back to sleeping in his own bed for a few nights after, Cas had stayed. After all, Dean had told himself. It was only logical. They didn’t have anywhere else for the guy to sleep. If sometimes Dean woke up with Cas curled in towards him, mumbling softly in his sleep, or else sprawled out ungainly over the entire goddamn bed like he wasn’t used to living with only four limbs, and Dean’s own hand starting to curl into Cas’ hair… well. Then that was just the hazards that came along with sleeping too close to someone.

Tonight Dean didn’t need any more excuses to convince himself of. He wanted to let himself feel exposed for at least the one night.

“Tell me,” Cas said, still looking at the ceiling like if he squinted at it long enough it might give him any answer he wished for. “Does my form bother you?”

Sometimes Dean figured that it had to be more of a curse than any sort of blessing, for Cas to know what anyone was thinking, but right now Dean would give almost anything to have that power himself, to be able to understand what was going on behind those big blue eyes, which didn’t look nearly as unearthly as they once had. But as Dean walked towards the bed, still working out what he wanted to say, Cas continued on.

“They could have consigned me to any form, Dean, it just so happened to be this one.”

“Well, I mean, the dragon was cool, but you wouldn’t have fit in the house all that easy,” Dean quipped as Cas sat up, but still didn’t look at him. “Look, Cas – you’d have been welcome here whatever it was you’d ended up looking like. You’re family now, and that ain’t changing any time soon, alright?”

Cas started doing that thing where his mouth started to twitch and his eyes softened, like smiling was a possibility he could consider. Whenever he succeeded in drawing one of those faces from the alien, Dean still felt happier with himself than if he’d got a whole audience cracking up and splitting their sides: Cas’ smiles meant all the more now he barely saw them.

“I guess it’s just a piece of good luck that this form you got left with, and I know it ain’t a lot, for you, is also one of the ones I’d still feel alright doing this with,” Dean said, his voice grown quieter, rougher, as he started to brush his fingers over Cas’ stubble – stubble he’d now watched grow and be shaven, because if Cas had stopped being able to change in some ways, in others he’d barely gotten started.

Cas leant into Dean’s touch almost unconsciously, and Dean cupped his chin with both hands as he kissed him again, far more gently than he had downstairs. And for the first time in what felt like forever Dean allowed himself to let go, to genuinely relax. Because he was safe, he was in control – hell, he was even _happy_ … and he was with Cas, who still tasted like the beer he’d barely had a bottle of, whose hair brushed lightly up with Dean’s fingers.

Not really him, Dean thought as he allowed Cas to push him gently back down onto the bed, and looped his legs around Cas’ back. Maybe once, but it had slowly become very much a part of him – he moved differently, Dean had noticed, since being consigned to the one skin. Hell, maybe it was more Cas’ body than Dean’s was his – however unknowing of what had been about to happen to him, Cas had chosen to greet them broken in that field as a man, and this man in particular too.

Dean wasn’t an idiot – even though currently he felt like the way Cas was sucking hard at the back of his neck was definitely losing him more than a few brain cell – he _knew_ that if Cas had turned into a dog or a rhino or something then sex would _clearly_ be the last thing on his mind when he thought of him. But there was still something about the _moment_ they were having or whatever that was making him want to declare to the whole world that he really didn’t give a crap what Cas looked like. He was always going to _matter_.

…which was a thought that was ridiculous and sappy and totally not him and Dean really hoped that Cas hadn’t listened in on it.

In answer, Cas brought his lips away from Dean’s neck and smiled at him. “Thank you, Dean,” he said simply. “Now stop ‘freaking out’.”

“Dude, you really don’t need to mime out the signs for those speech marks with your hands.”

Cas looked down at him quizzically as he slowly dropped his hands and splayed them over Dean’s waist. “I don’t?”

“No, you – you _dick_ , you knew that already,” Dean said, glaring, as he spotted the little almost-smile growing over Cas’ face and hit the alien over the head with a pillow.

“Then let me redeem myself to you,” Cas said smoothly, laying the pillow down again, without fixing his now gloriously ruffled hair. And then he let his hand begin to wander lower down Dean’s body, though agonisingly still not far enough, but when Dean looked up into his eyes he was sure this time that Cas knew _exactly_ what he was doing.

Dean felt shocked again into realising just how much he’d already been forced to trust this guy he’d still only known all of a few months. Because Cas knew every stray thought, good and bad, that ever passed through Dean’s head – he knew what Dean wanted, what Dean didn’t like, and any secrets that might come popping into his head. All of it belonged to Cas and to think on that for more than a moment was terrifying.

“I do not try to listen now, mostly,” Cas said softly. “Because they belong to you, and only you, and I understand something of what privacy means now. But sometimes,” Cas continued as he slid two fingers down the hem of Dean’s boxers, “sometimes my abilities could still prove useful.”

And as Cas briefly stoked a teasing hand over Dean’s still fully covered cock, Dean bucked his hips up slightly into the empty air, feeling his cheeks begin to burn.

“Now,” Cas said slowly. “You did something for me last time. And I saw from your mind it would be something you wouldn’t mind have reciprocated.”

Yeah, Dean thought, as Cas started mouthing at his jeans, eyes not leaving Dean’s face. If he had to be at anyone’s mercy, he was damn lucky he’d been put here at Cas’.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …So this is going to probably/almost get continued in several different timestamp stories still circling around the Disney ideas, despite it already being, as my flatmate described, “too damn long.”
> 
> I know this took a while to arrive but here’s hoping it was worth it for anyone who was waiting on it!
> 
> And a giant thank you to everyone who offered much needed encouragement during my (frequent) whining about this.


End file.
